In 'Self Comes to Mind' I pay a lot of attention to simple creatures without brains or minds, because those 'cartooned abstractions of who we are' operate on precisely the same principles that we do.

We are not thinking machines that feel; rather, we are feeling machines that think.

More may have been learned about the brain and the mind in the 1990s - the so-called decade of the brain - than during the entire previous history of psychology and neuroscience.

A conscious mind is a mind with a self in it.

There is no such thing as a disembodied mind. The mind is implanted in the brain, and the brain is implanted in the body.

I continue to be fascinated by the fact that feelings are not just the shady side of reason but that they help us to reach decisions as well.

Emotions are enmeshed in the neural networks of reason.

The self is a perpetually recreated neurobiological state.

Consciousness begins when brains acquire the power, the simple power I must add, of telling a story.

The problem that we, as living organisms, face - and not we only, humans, but any living organism faces - is the management of life.

Rather than being a luxury, emotions are a very intelligent way of driving an organism toward certain outcomes.

But men are such strange creatures, really. I think most of them would rather we weren’t around at all, so they could just spend time mooning over each other. Hero worship and all that stuff.

I think that the minute that you have a backup plan, you've admitted that you're not going to succeed.

The trouble is that no devastating or redeeming fires have ever burnt in my life.... My life began by flickering out.

I have high aspirations. I want to be an architect.

I have to convince myself I know what I'm doing.

Anybody can make a baby without any checking, without thinking. This type of parenting can be tragic because one of the greatest actions a human being can do is to create another life.

Any act of injury done from self-interest, whether amounting to killing or not, is doubtless himsa.

I didn't speak English until I came to Pittsburgh.

One never comes into embarrassment, if one is ready to balance. To ask oneself never in embarrassment, what have you in these decades made.

Buy less, choose well, make it last. Quality rather than quantity: That is true sustainability. If people only bought beautiful things rather than rubbish, we wouldn't have climate change!