In our national parlance, what's usually meant by the word "maverick" is someone who skirts the edge of sanity--or is so insane as to appear sane--who then does something absolutely insane and yet, after the passage of time, and especially if the mav...
I know the difference between sadness and depression. Clinical depression has no source from which it springs-it just is. Intractable sadness has nothing to do with synapses, or brain chemistry, or essential salts, it's born of something. It's the pr...
We came around the corner and stood in the doorway of what looked like a paint-testing ground. This was where we proved once and for all that we were good loving parents. We decided to let him live. "What is painting doing in my best Tupperware bowl?...
Underneath my imagination there didn't seem to be anything solid except for the space where I shoved my pain and sadness. Besides that, there were only twisted steel threads of axiety, woven through my body and brain, wired into me like a constant wa...
It is the finding of neuroscience, in fact, that belief is at least in part a matter of emotion. Whatever we believe to be true lights up areas of our brain responsible for self-identification and the processing of feelings and sentiments. If we beli...
We can't tell you the origin of the experience. But we can tell you the brain does appear to be built to have these [mystical] experiences. There are examples of people reaching similar states, spontaneously. But for the most part, it takes work. Med...
Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. man had no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he need...
It came at last. "'Dr. Graham, tell me,' she asked tremulously, 'do you believe that prayers - wicked unreasonable prayers - are granted?' He helped himself to another slice of bread-and-butter before answering. 'Well-' he said slowly, 'it seems hard...
How do we regulate our emotions? The answer is surprisingly simple: by thinking about them. The prefrontal cortex allows each of us to contemplate his or her own mind, a talent psychologists call metacognition. We know when we are angry; every emotio...
I've begun worshipping the sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can see the sun. It's there for me every day. And the things it brings me are quite apparent all the time: heat, light, food, and a lovely...
I am not my sister. Words from the books curl around each other make little sense until I read them again and again, the story settling into memory. my teacher says. the teacher says. . But I don't want to read faster or older or any way else that mi...
He gave it its present name, and lived here shut up: day and night poring over the wicked heaps of papers in the suit, and hoping against hope to disentangle it from its mystification and bring it to a close. In the meantime, the place became dilapid...
Take a moment, right now, and consider the enormity of activity going on inside of you – from the billions of cells to the even more billions of microscopic organisms. And in that same moment consider the enormity of activity in the oceans, the for...
I don't believe in greatness that is bestowed as a rare gift to a few lucky ones. Rather, I think all people have greatness inside them. It is just a matter of persistence--sticking to what you have envisioned until it is reality. I have a deep convi...
She holds herself with such reserve. She smiles, but the smile doesn't reach her eyes, even in the company of the girls she's chosen to eat with. Why? I have no clue, and I really don't want to spend my time worrying about it. But my brain pushes at ...
Even though its common knowledge these days, it never ceases to amaze me that all the richness of our mental life - all our feelings, our emotions, our thoughts, our ambitions, our love life, our religious sentiments and even what each of us regards ...
Dear Natasha, It's the middle of the night. I can't sleep. Thoughts are creeping through my head like darkness slips around the bodies of sky scrapers in every city we've ever been to. From the bottom up, suffocating the life on the street first and ...
Now envy and antipathy, passions irreconcilable in reason, nevertheless in fact may spring conjoined like Chang and Eng in one birth. Is Envy then such a monster? Well, though many an arraigned mortal has in hopes of mitigated penalty pleaded guilty ...
I wish people would spread a Faustian rumor about me.' I leaned over and knocked Sunshine's hand out of Luke's hair. 'A Faustian myth,' I repeated. 'It's so much more interesting than just being that nouveau-poor blond girl who lives in a big house w...
I feel guilty because for a long time I didn't allow myself a television, and I used to drop that fact in conversation to impress people. I thought it made me sound dignified. A couple of years ago, however, I visited a church in the suburbs and ther...
Invisible prose only!" rules out the sparkling style of [writers]. . . For [whom] vivid prose, and the visionary mind it evinces, rich with speculation, insight, and subjectivity, the craft and offers a unique caliber of truth. Is there any other art...
