If we keep practicing mental skills it is likely we can strengthen neural connections and make new connections.

A relapse doesn't mean you'll never walk down the path you prefer. But I think relapses are almost an inevitable part of any course of self-development.

If we think of our brains as a map, those early roads are like grooves, tram tracks, easy to fall into.

In order to stretch ourselves we do need to experience the vulnerability of not knowing the outcome.

Our emotional map is laid down mainly in relationship with our earliest caregiver in the first couple of years of life.

If we are not using our brains' capacity for challenge it feels to me as though it atrophies like an unused muscle.

A sense of achievement improves general confidence and self-esteem.

I am talking about being optimistic enough to sow some seeds in the hope that some of them will germinate and grow into flowers.

There are probably times where the creative process is not helped by collaboration.

Two brains are better than one. You've twice the brain capacity and you have two sets of experiences and genes to bring to any challenge.

The trouble is if we take no new steps to try a new challenge, our comfort zone doesn't seem just to stay still, but retract.

Outrage is easy, cheap, and oversold. The nation needs less anger and more thoughtful reflection, less shouting and more listening, less dissembling and more honesty.

Excellence will give you the recognition you crave for, but humility will keep you standing longer than expected.

Nostalgia is a form of depression both for a society and an individual.

I don't miss playing football, but I do miss going into the dressing room every day and having a laugh.

I primarily buy art to show it off.

Please," she whispered as she opened the book, "please get me out of here just for an hour or so, please take me far, far away

For any leftover inventory, publishers must have a program to maximize the sale of a book.

You can be aware of your past without being it.

You are as young as your spine is flexible.

Science fiction is fantasy with bolts painted on outside.