Indeed, the best way to think of willpower is not as some shapeless behavioral trait but as a sort of psychic muscle, one that can atrophy or grow stronger depending on how it's used.

Jellyfish serve as a model for bioengineers for the same reason yeast were once so valuable to geneticists: they're simple to deconstruct.

There's no such thing as downtime for your brain.

Your parents leave you too soon and your kids and spouse come along late, but your siblings know you when you are in your most inchoate form.

Vaccines save lives; fear endangers them. It's a simple message parents need to keep hearing.

From the time we're born, our brothers and sisters are our collaborators and coconspirators, our role models and our cautionary tales.

Confidence quickly curdles into arrogance; smarts turn to smugness, charm turns to smarm.

It's not mere extremism that makes folks at the fringes so troubling; it's extremism wedded to false beliefs. Humans have long been dupes, easily gulled by rumors and flat-out lies.

There's a universe inside your head - a place of pictures and passions, of songs and sorrows. It's everything you are - and it's an utter mystery.

When we're awake, cortisol can fragment memories - one reason eyewitness crime scene accounts are so unreliable. But at night that very fragmentation allows creative recombinations of ideas.

In both children and adults, there can be a hard-to-deny link between a robust sense of hope and either work productivity or academic achievement.

So... what was the reason to don't be social!???...Oh, thanks Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution for reminding me.

A woman's strength is the irresistible might of weakness.

The most positive men are the most credulous, since they most believe themselves, and advise most with their falsest flatterer and worst enemy--their own self-love.

I was on TV for almost sixteen weeks during American Idol. It's at the point now where it's old.

The danger in happiness - "Now everything is turning out right for me; from now on i'll love every turn of fate - Who wants to be my fate?

Hee that lives ill, feare followes him.

How much easier is it to be generous than just.

In the life of a real writer, nothing is ever lost, no word you write is a waste of your time or energy.

I wish I had a hundred years, she said, very quietly. A hundred years I could give to you.

... true faith never comes without anguish.