One of the most pervasive mistakes is to believe that our visual system gives a faithful representation of what is "out there" in the same way that a movie camera would.

What we find is that our brains have colossal things happening in them all the time.

Every atom in your body is the same quark in different places at the same moment in time.

Instead of reality being passively recorded by the brain, it is actively constructed by it.

As an undergraduate I majored in British and American literature at Rice University.

The first lesson about trusting your senses is: don't. Just because you believe something to be true, just because you know it's true, that doesn't mean it is true.

It turns out your conscious mind - the part you think of as you - is really the smallest part of what’s happening in your brain, and usually the last one in line to find out any information.

There is a looming chasm between what your brain knows and what your mind is capable of accessing.

You are more likely to believe that a statement is true if you have heard it before - whether or not it is actually true.

Love was not specified in the design of your brain; it is merely an endearing algorithm that freeloads on the leftover processing cycles.

We don't really understand most of what's happening in the cosmos. Is there any afterlife? Who knows.

Constant use had not worn ragged the fabric of their friendship.

I was a woman unaccustomed to guilt, and it drowned me - pulling me deeper, cutting off my air supply.

To have given pleasure to one human being is a recollection that sweetens life.

Error is the price we pay for progress.

The seed of the idea is developed by both labor and the unconscious, and the struggle that goes on between them.

It was not right to believe anything you couldn't see or hold in your hands or test with your teeth.

... the human soul, beaten down, overwhelmed, faced by complete failure and ruin, can still rise up against unbearable odds and triumph.

When Fashion hath once Established, what Folly or craft began, Custom makes it Sacred, and 'twill be thought impudence or madness, to contradict or question it.

At some point, you've got to realize, you're either a leading man or you're not.

The gift of achievement is not the things you get, but the person you become.