This is what consciousness does: it sets the goals, and the rest of the system learns how to meet them.

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.

It is important for you to understand your purpose for living on planet earth

Most people do not want much. All they want is to be envied by most people.

She wanted him to tell her that when you love someone so hard and so fierce, it was all right to do things that you knew were wrong.

No woman is responsible for altering the psyche of her oppressor, even when that psyche is embodied in another woman.

All through life I've harbored anger rather than expressed it at the moment.

There is no real education that does not respond to felt need; anything else acquired is trifling display.

I don't think that the feminist movement has done much for the characters of women.

I'm not critic-proof, and I still take it personally, but I take it less personally now.

A Christian is a walking sermon. They preach far more than a minister does, for they preach all week long.

I've often thought I would like to try to write a conventional novel, but I just don't know enough about the real world to write one.