The brain is not a bag of traits. It's startlingly complex. There are few or no single genes with a consistent effect on the mind.

Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system, painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language.

Why are empirical questions about how the mind works so weighted down with political and moral and emotional baggage?

All our behaviours are a result of neurophysiological activity in the brain. There is no reason to believe there is any magic going on.

I suspect music is auditory cheesecake, an exquisite confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of... our mental faculties.

Evolutionary psychology is one of four sciences that are bringing human nature back into the picture.

Thanks to the redundancy of language, yxx cxn xndxrstxnd whxt x xm wrxtxng xvxn xf x rxplxcx xll thx vxwxls wxth xn "x" (t gts lttl hrdr f y dn't vn kn whr th vwls r)

Photography is a kind of virtual reality, and it helps if you can create the illusion of being in an interesting world.

Plants can't very well defend themselves by their behavior, so they resort to chemical warfare, and plants are saturated with toxins and irritants to deter creatures like us who want to eat them.

I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift.

Babies are born with the instinct to speak, the way spiders are born with the instinct to spin webs. You don't need to train babies to speak; they just do. But reading is different.

In order to be written into History

Don't make me regret this, " I said, breathless."You haven't regretted me once.

Habit is a great deadener.

Let go of yesterday. Let today be a new beginning and be the best that you can, and you'll get to where God wants you to be.

Hanukkah is...the festival of lights, instead of one day of presents, we get eight crazy nights

I ain't never been nothin but a winner.

We've had fiction from the time of cave drawings. I think fiction, storytelling, and narrative in general will always exist in some form.

He's got great credentials by winning the World Cup, but he did it with Brazil - my granny could probably have managed Brazil to World Cup success.

Every sin that is left without repentance is a sin unto death, for which if even a saint shall pray, he shall not be heard.

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.