We spend our lives on a thin slice between the unimaginably small scales of the atoms that compose us and the infinitely large scales of galaxies.

We are not conscious of most things until we ask ourselves questions about them.

This is the hallmark of a robust biological system: political parties can perish in a tragic accident and the society will still run, sometimes with little more than a hiccup to the system. It may be that for every strange clinical case in which brain damage leads to a bizarre change in behavior or perception, there are hundreds of cases in which parts of the brain are damaged with no detectable clinical sign.

If our brains were simple enough to be understood, we wouldn't be smart enough to understand them.

Once you begin deliberating about where your fingers are jumping on the piano keyboard, you can no longer pull off the piece.

Nothing is inherently tasty or repulsive - it depends on your needs. Deliciousness is simply an index of usefulness.

Each cell sends electrical pulses to other cells, up to hundreds of times per second. If you represented each of these trillions and trillions of pulses in your brain by a single photon of light, the combined output would be blinding.