When we first hear [a] word, we start putting these associational hooks into it that make it easier to fish it back out at some later date.

Our lives are the sum of our memories. How much are we willing to lose from our already short lives by … not paying attention?

To the extent that experience is the sum of our memories and wisdom the sum of experience, having a better memory would mean knowing not only more about the world, but also more about myself.

Once upon a time, this idea of having a trained, disciplined, cultivated memory was not nearly so alien as it would seem to us to be today.

A meaningful relationship between two people cannot sustain itself only in the present tense.

learning texts is worth doing not because it's easy but because it's hard.

What better way to try to begin to understand the nature and meaning of human memory than to investigate its absence?

Our brains are obviously capable of astoundingly fast and complex calculations that happen subconsciously. We can't explain them because most of the time we hardly even realize they're happening.

Everyone thinks that they are intelligent even though there is no sign of intelligence.

Mediocrity is ‘purpose’ left to rot in minds ensnared in the deluded rationalization that vision is nothing more than a collection of fanciful dreams constructed by an imaginary God.

Love is the ultimate expression of the will to live.

I thought originally when I was in school and I wanted to be a poet, I knew that poets seemed to be miserable.

I guess you can tease me about being a drama queen, because that did heighten the drama.

It's hard to say what role race really played in my case.

The thing about genius is it will never yield to circumstances. Genius regards what's given as the beginning of its need to find or devise something else.

To become a mother is to learn a whole language - to relearn it, perhaps, as it was the tongue to which we were born - and hence gain entrance to a forgotten world of comprehension.

Have a sense of pride in your motherland. Just as your mother has given birth to you, so too the land has given birth to you.

Whatever things a man gives up, By those he cannot suffer pain.