No one ever pretended that shopping for anything is a rational experience. If it were, would there be Fluffernutter? Laceless sneakers? Porkpie hats? Would the Chia Pet even exist?

Jellyfish serve as a model for bioengineers for the same reason yeast were once so valuable to geneticists: they're simple to deconstruct.

There's no such thing as downtime for your brain.

Your parents leave you too soon and your kids and spouse come along late, but your siblings know you when you are in your most inchoate form.

Vaccines save lives; fear endangers them. It's a simple message parents need to keep hearing.

From the time we're born, our brothers and sisters are our collaborators and coconspirators, our role models and our cautionary tales.

Confidence quickly curdles into arrogance; smarts turn to smugness, charm turns to smarm.

It's not mere extremism that makes folks at the fringes so troubling; it's extremism wedded to false beliefs. Humans have long been dupes, easily gulled by rumors and flat-out lies.

There's a universe inside your head - a place of pictures and passions, of songs and sorrows. It's everything you are - and it's an utter mystery.

When we're awake, cortisol can fragment memories - one reason eyewitness crime scene accounts are so unreliable. But at night that very fragmentation allows creative recombinations of ideas.

In both children and adults, there can be a hard-to-deny link between a robust sense of hope and either work productivity or academic achievement.

The world is abounding with beauty. You are a demonstration of this.

I do believe—that all the world's a star. Beyond that heav'nly light I shall fly far!" Luke (ACT I, Scene 7)

Self acceptance is common, Unfortunately, for some daft reason you are expected to have some kind of psychology degree to learn it.

The more we yield to pressure, the more easily we will yield next time.

When I kissed you the day I left, I swear to God you stripped me bare.

Ignorance shrinks minds

My affection for you is not my problem.

There's no ceiling... just a continuation of improvement.

I am not the leader; I am a representative of the leader. The leader is the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, whom we believe is very much alive, and is directing me from where he is.

I love [my parents], but what if I could really talk to them? I mean, what if they had some answers? Or would that just be too weird?