Until you appreciate something crucial - It is incredibly easy to manipulate us as to who counts as an Us, who as a Them.

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.

One of humankind's most enduring misconceptions is that of nature's bounty... the belief that nature is such a powerful force that it is indestructible.

A strong man can make his own luck.

In August, an inescapable blanket of heat settled over Paducah, the last gasping breath of summer roaring its weight out over the populace.

I'll sing outside your window. I'm as old fashioned as they come.

It does people good to have to do things they don't like in moderation.

Would the last animal, eating garbage and living on the last scrap of land, his mate dead, would he still forgive you?

Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America.

The number of flavors is infinite, for every soluble body has a peculiar flavor, like none other.

Any moron with a pack of matches can start a fire. Raining down sulfur takes a huge level of endurance. Mass genocide is the most exhausting activity one can engage in, next to soccer.

This was, I would later realise, a planet of things wrapped inside things. Food inside wrappers. Bodies inside clothes. Contempt inside smiles. Everything was hidden away.