The brain is highly structured, but it is also extremely flexible. It's not a blank slate, but it isn't written in stone, either.

Ineffective or weak brain connections are pruned in much the same way a gardener would prune a tree or bush, giving the plant a desired shape.

We're in a culture where everything is either consumption or production, so child care is either a very, very bad-paying form of work or a very expensive luxury that you purchase. There isn't a good place in our picture of the world for what caregiving is about. Even teenage babysitters have sort of disappeared from the scene.

The more obsessively we focus on what a particular food is going to do for us, the less healthy we've become. Simple pleasures become complicated.

Young children seem to be learning who to share this toy with and figure out how it works, while adolescents seem to be exploring some very deep and profound questions: how should this society work? How should relationships among people work? The exploration is: who am I, what am I doing?

Because we imagine, we can have invention and technology. It's actually play, not necessity, that is the mother of invention.

It's turns out to be much easier to simulate a grandmaster chess player than it is to simulate a 2-year-old.