I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up; instead, I had always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla.

Stress is not a state of mind... it's measurable and dangerous, and humans can't seem to find their off-switch.

We live well enough to have the luxury to get ourselves sick with purely social, psychological stress.

The purpose of science is not to cure us of our sense of mystery and wonder, but to constantly reinvent and reinvigorate it.

An open mind is a prerequisite to an open heart.

But if you get chronically, psychosocially stressed, you're going to compromise your health. So, essentially, we've evolved to be smart enough to make ourselves sick.

The less it is possible that something can be, the more it must be.

Essentially, we humans live well enough and long enough, and are smart enough, to generate all sorts of stressful events purely in our heads.

We all seek out stress. We hate the wrong kinds of stress but when it's the right kind, we love it - we pay good money to be stressed by a scary movie, a roller coaster ride, a challenging puzzle.

What does the frontal cortex do? Gratification postponement, executive function, long-term planning, and impulse control. Basically, it makes you do the harder thing.

If a rat is a good model for your emotional life, you're in big trouble.

Treasure your Ideas, for they are like seeds that germinate in your mind. They Root, Shoot, and Fruit into Concepts & Creativity that are beyond Imagination.

Marriage is a fine institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.

Every journey has a destination, known or unknown.

Romance is the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure.

Optimism is the first cousin of love, and it's exactly like love in three ways: it's pushy, it has no real sense of humour, and it turns up where you least expect it.

Some of my best thinking is done by others.

I don't know anyone who would be exclusively working on game music, per se.

This constant pressure from record companies to come up with a hit single or something like that, I find completely tiresome.

The Labour party has never been a socialist party, although there have always been socialists in it - a bit like Christians in the Church of England.

Living in war is a co- existence with death.