“I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it's a very poor scheme for survival. ”

“Just about every adult human being back then had a brain weighing about three kilogrammes! There was no end to the evil schemes that a thought machine that oversized couldn't imagine and execute. So I raise this question, although there is nobody around to answer it: Can it be doubted that three-kilogramme brains were once nearly fatal defects in the evolution of the human race?”

“I think that life has taught us that you don't have to have the crown to be the queen.”

“A long time ago, the act of another put the dark in his veins, and it's been there ever since. The night he lost his true love, his heart and his brain became one, so that his heart was scheming and his brain was loving. 'That doesn't sound so bad', my dream-self thought, but suddenly I could feel it, and it was very bad indeed—for when a brain loves, it is only out of obsession, and when a heart schemes, it does not mean well.”

“Are we so childish (I do not say childlike) as to think that a God who could scheme a Jesus-plan would lead poor pilgrims into situations they could not bear?”

“Prediction in a complex world is a chancy business. Every decision that a survival machine takes is a gamble, and it is the business of genes to program brains in advance so that on average they take decisions that pay off. The currency used in the casino of evolution is survival, strictly gene survival, but for many purposes individual survival is a reasonable approximation.”