“Instead of reality being passively recorded by the brain, it is actively constructed by it.”

“Societies would _not_ be better off if everyone were like Mr Spock, all rationality and no emotion. Instead, a balance - a teaming up of the internal rivals - is optimal for brains. ... Some balance of the emotional and rational systems is needed, and that balance may already be optimized by natural selection in human brains.”

“...you are battered and bruised in the collisions between reminiscence and reality.”

“Love was not specified in the design of your brain; it is merely an endearing algorithm that freeloads on the leftover processing cycles.”

“There is a looming chasm between what your brain knows and what your mind is capable of accessing.”

“Constant reminding ourselves that we not see with our eyes but with our synergetic eye-brain system working as a whole will produce constant astonishment as we notice, more and more often, how much of our perceptions emerge from our preconceptions.”

“When we're in a human body, we don't care about universal collapse - instead, we care only about a meeting of the eyes, a glimpse of bare flesh, the caressing tones of a loved voice, joy, love, light, the orientation of a house plant, the shade of a paint stroke, the arrangement of hair.”