A.J. Jacobs

“There is no better time in history to be an idiot than right now.”

“To properly engage in magical thinking, I find you have to think of every possible ghastly scenario. That's the only way you outsmart fate.”

“On the other hand, if you're too delusionally optimistic, you'll be unbearable. You'll refuse to save money or make backup plans. You'll invade foreign countries and expect to be greeted as liberators. Like everything else in health, you need balance.”

“I find placebos uplifting and exhilarating. It means that taking action--no matter what the action is--might help you feel better.”

“Step back for a minute. Pretend you're from Mars. From a coldly rational point of view, pedestrian helmets aren't a crazy idea.”

“So, if weight loss is your goal, and you have impressive self-control, raw food is something to consider.”

“The dehydrator blows warm air on your food for hours, sometimes days. It reminds me of the temperature and intensity of dog's breath. So imagine a German shepherd exhaling on your fruit for a weekend.”

“After decimating several vegetables, I decide juicing is my favorite form of food preparation. There's something perversely appealing about subjecting an innocent plant to that much violence.”

“The MRI has a repertoire of noises that resemble, in no particular order: a game-show buzzer for a wrong answer, urgent knocking, a modem from 1992, a grizzly-bear growl, and a man with a raspy voice shouting what sounds like "mother cooler!”

“Cigarettes' cost far outweigh any resulting trimness, just as asphyxiation outweighs the benefits of stretching out the spine when you hang yourself from a shower curtain rod.”

“I did get a colonic, but I've decided not write about it at length. I didn't find it helpful or enlightening. I can tell you want it felt like, though: It felt like someone shooting water up your butt.”

“I'm hungry enough that I started to salivate at the sight of lettuce. I repeat: lettuce.”

“He's skinny, but not the POW skinny I was expecting. More like lead-singer-of-an-emo-band skinny.”

“Like God and Duane Reade drugstores, toxins are everywhere.”

“hand and wrist aches are more common than ever...Wikipedia lists...my favorite, Raver's Thumb, which you can get from repeatedly waving a glow stick in the air (see, kids, ecstasy really is bad for you).”

“On the bright side, my slightly lower IQ means that I probably have worse recall. Maybe I'll soon forget that I have a depressed IQ.”

“I figured the government wouldn't let poison flow from the taps. But in general, I'm too trusting of the government. I'm the polar opposite of the Tea Partiers. I have no problem with a nanny state. But in this case, the nanny state has been chatting on the cell phone and ignoring the baby as it plays with matches.”

“How do you gag the voice in your head that says, 'You don't have to go to the gym today. There's always tomorrow. C'mon, my friend, it's just one plate of curly fries. Yes, just for you!' (My inner voice reminds me of a particularly aggressive rug salesman at a Turkish bazaar.)”

“I'm not a big scatology fan, unlike my sons, who can amuse themselves for an entire afternoon by repeating the phrase 'crocodile fart.' So I'll spare you from an overabundance of detail in this chapter. This chapter will be somewhat soft focus, like the TV camera in a Barbra Streisand interview.”

“If ever I was going to listen to a string of swearwords sitting next to a ninety-four-year-old, I'm glad that ninety-four-year-old was my grandfather. Not that he swears a lot. It's just that he can take it. And, he is currently laughing so hard that his eyes are watery.”

“Incidentally, I spent some time on the Purell website, where you can find a list of ninety-nine places germs lurk (in-flight magazines, movie tickets, gas-pump keypads, hotel room a/c controls, and on and on). It's hilarious and terrifying. The only place they don't mention is the Purell dispensers themselves. You know they're coated with germs. It's one of health's cruelest catch-22s.”

“My immune system has always been overly welcoming of germs. It's far too polite, the biological equivalent of a southern hostess inviting y'all nice microbes to stay awhile and have some artichoke dip.”

“...Med students panic their first year when they learn all the diseases. It's not until the second year that they learn the cures.”

“There's a beauty to forgiveness, especially forgiveness that goes beyond rationality. Unconditional love is an illogical notion, but such a great & powerful one”

“The key to making healthy decisions is to respect your future self. Honor him or her. Treat him or her like you would treat a friend or a loved one.”

“I know that everything is connected like a worldwide version of the six-degrees-of-separation game. I know that history is simultaneously a bloody mess and a collection of feats so inspiring and amazing they make you proud to share the same DNA structure with the rest of humanity. I know you’d better focus on the good stuff or you’re screwed. I know that the race does not go to the swift, nor the bread to the wise, so you should soak up what enjoyment you can. I know not to take cinnamon for granted. I know that morality lies in even the smallest decisions, like whether to pick up and throw away a napkin... I know firsthand the oceanic volume of information in the world. I know that I know very little of that ocean… I know I’ve contradicted myself hundreds of times over the last year, and that history has contradicted itself thousands of times… I know that you should always say yes to adventures or you’ll lead a very dull life. I know that knowledge and intelligence are not the same thing—but they do live in the same neighborhood. I know once again, firsthand, the joy of learning.”

“What seems terrible at first may turn out to be a great thing. You can't predict.”

“Jealousy is a useless, time-wasting emotion that's eating me alive.”

“Sometimes miracles occur only when you jump in.”

“Unconditional love is an illogical notion, but such a great and powerful one.”

“Behavior shapes emotions.”

“I've rarely said the word "Lord," unless it's followed by "of the Rings.”

“Paintings! They're like TV, but they don't move. ”

“Plus, in one of his e-mails, the guy said he didn't like pancakes. What kind of asshole doesn't like pancakes? ”

“Ezekiel and his fellow prophets have become my heroes. They were fearless. They literalized metaphors. They turned their lives into protest pieces. They proved that, in the name of truth, sometimes you can't be afraid to take a left turn from polite society and look absurd.”

“I know the name of Turkey's leading avant-guard publication. I know that John Quincy Adams married for money. I know that Bud Abbott was a double-crosser, that absentee ballots are very popular in Ireland, and that dwarves have prominent buttocks.”

“I thought religion would make me live with my head in the clouds, but as often as not, it grounds me in this world.”

“It comes back to the old question: How can the Bible be so wise in some places and so barbaric in others? And why should we put any faith in a book that includes such brutality?”

“You tell them you have a hunger and a thirst. You don't sit at the same table but you have a hunger and a thirst.”

“In trying to avoid one sin I've committed another.”

“I can’t help but notice that you keep writing love poetry to my wife. Well, you see, I married her, which makes her my wife. You know what you might want to try? Writing some poems about the sunset. The sunset isn’t fucking married.”

“This is what the Sabbath should feel like. A pause. Not just a minor pause, but a major pause. Not just lowering the volume, but a muting. As the famous rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel put it, the Sabbath is a sanctuary in time.”

“It's a different way of looking at the world. Your life isn't about rights. It's about responsibilities."--Mr Bill Berkowitz”

“philosophyI studied philosophy for four years. But I'd trade everything I learned for this passage... quoted in the Britannica:'But we were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments? Or our treaties whatever they may be worth; our symphonies however seldom they may be played; our peaceful acres, however frequently they may be converted into battlefields; our dreams however rarely they may be accomplished. The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses.'Amen.”

“The whole bible is the working out of the relationship between God and man. God is not a dictator barking out orders and demanding silent obedience. Were it so, there would be no relationship at all. No real relationship goes just one way. There are always two active parties. We must have reverence and awe for God, and honor for the chain of tradition. But that doesn't mean we can't use new information to help us read the holy texts in new ways. ”

“I'm still agnostic. But in the words of Elton Richards, I'm now a reverant agnostic. Which isn't an oxymoron, I swear. I now believe that whether or not there's a God, there is such a thing as sacredness. Life is sacred. The Sabbath can be a sacred day. Prayer can be a sacred ritual. There is something transcendent, beyond the everyday. It's possible that humans created this sacredness ourselves, but that doesn't take away from its power or importance.”

“. . . my obsession with gratefulness. I can't stop. Just now, I press the elevator button and am thankful that it arrives quickly. I get onto the elevator and am thankful that the elevator cable didn't snap and plummet me to the basement. I go to the fifth floor and am thankful that I didn't have to stop on the second or third or fourth floor. I get out and am thankful that Julie left the door unlocked so I don't have to rummage for my King Kong key ring. I walk in, and am thankful that Jasper is home and healthy and stuffing his face with pineapple wedges. And on and on. I'm actually muttering to myself, 'Thank you. . .thank you. . . thank you.' It's an odd way to live. But also kind of great and powerful. I've never before been so aware of the thousands of little good things, the thousands of things that go right every day.”

“I've started to look at life differently. When you're thanking God for every little you - every meal, every time you wake up, every time you take a sip of water - you can't help but be more thankful for life itself, for the unlikely and miraculous fact that you exist at all.”

“Think of negative speech as verbal pollution. And that's what I've been doing: visualizing insults and gossip as a dark cloud, maybe one with some sulfur dioxide. Once you've belched it out, you can't take it back. As grandma said, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. The interesting this is, the less often I vocalize my negative thoughts, the fewer negative thoughts I cook up in the first place.”

“I am officially Jewish, but I’m Jewish in the same way the Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant.”