It's probably even the case that if you stoked up some Buddhist monks with tons of testosterone, they'd become wildly competitive as to who can do the most acts of random kindness.

Stress is not a state of mind... it's measurable and dangerous, and humans can't seem to find their off-switch.

We live well enough to have the luxury to get ourselves sick with purely social, psychological stress.

The purpose of science is not to cure us of our sense of mystery and wonder, but to constantly reinvent and reinvigorate it.

An open mind is a prerequisite to an open heart.

But if you get chronically, psychosocially stressed, you're going to compromise your health. So, essentially, we've evolved to be smart enough to make ourselves sick.

The less it is possible that something can be, the more it must be.

Essentially, we humans live well enough and long enough, and are smart enough, to generate all sorts of stressful events purely in our heads.

We all seek out stress. We hate the wrong kinds of stress but when it's the right kind, we love it - we pay good money to be stressed by a scary movie, a roller coaster ride, a challenging puzzle.

What does the frontal cortex do? Gratification postponement, executive function, long-term planning, and impulse control. Basically, it makes you do the harder thing.

If a rat is a good model for your emotional life, you're in big trouble.

Why do I need to have reasons? When someone decides to have a baby, people don't go around asking what her reasons are.

I loved hard-rock bands, and I loved songwriters who told stories.

The awkward moment when Santa accidentally leaves the price tag on your present.

Under President Obama's new health care law, Medicaid will become a very different health coverage program than first envisioned.

I'm on the front line and I am a rapper.

We live in a vale of tears...We can have all the dreams we like, but life is hard, implacable, sad.

she braided my sister's hair with hands that smelled deep roots buried in the earth she told me the old stories how time never mattered when she died they gave me her clock

People wonder why I go out with models with nothing between their heads

Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance.

I produce the records. I don't hand over control to some really expensive producer who then talks to the record company and then tries to bend me to their will - for commercial purposes.