Good books, written by men or women, are ones in which you lose consciousness of the person writing the sentences.

After years of having immersed myself in science, I do think that if you master several different ways of thinking, it makes your own thought processes more agile.

All human states are organic brain states - happiness, sadness, fear, lust, dreaming, doing math problems and writing novels - and our brains are not static.

There's a phenomenology of being sick, one that depends on temperament, personal history, and the culture which we live in.

Intellectual curiosity about one's own illness is certainly born of a desire for mastery. If I couldn't cure myself, perhaps I could at least begin to understand myself.

I think that it's important for people to read philosophy and literature is not because I think everyone should be a well-rounded human being, but because it will help you think better about what you are doing.

Ture stories can't be told forward, only backward. We invent them from the vantage point of an ever-changing present and tell ourselves how they unfolded.