“Don't separate the mind from the body. Don't separate even character - you can't. Our unit of existence is a body, a physical, tangible, sensate entity with perceptions and reactions that express it and form it simultaneously.Disease is one of our languages. Doctors understand what disease has to say about itself. It's up to the person with the disease to understand what the disease has to say to her.”

“Scar tissue has no character. It's not like skin. It doesn't show age or illness or pallor or tan. It has no pores, no hair, no wrinkles. It's like a slip cover. It shields and disguises what's beneath. That's why we grow it; we have something to hide. ”

“The point is, the brain talks to itself, and by talking to itself changes its perceptions. To make a new version of the not-entirely-false model, imagine the first interpreter as a foreign correspondent, reporting from the world. The world in this case means everything out- or inside our bodies, including serotonin levels in the brain. The second interpreter is a news analyst, who writes op-ed pieces. They read each other's work. One needs data, the other needs an overview; they influence each other. They get dialogues going.INTERPRETER ONE: Pain in the left foot, back of heel.INTERPRETER TWO: I believe that's because the shoe is too tight.INTERPRETER ONE: Checked that. Took off the shoe. Foot still hurts.INTERPRETER TWO: Did you look at it?INTERPRETER ONE: Looking. It's red.INTERPRETER TWO: No blood?INTERPRETER ONE: Nope.INTERPRETER TWO: Forget about it.INTERPRETER ONE: Okay.Mental illness seems to be a communication problem between interpreters one and two.An exemplary piece of confusion.INTERPRETER ONE: There's a tiger in the corner.INTERPRETER TWO: No, that's not a tiger- that's a bureau.INTERPRETER ONE: It's a tiger, it's a tiger!INTERPRETER TWO: Don't be ridiculous. Let's go look at it.Then all the dendrites and neurons and serotonin levels and interpreters collect themselves and trot over to the corner.If you are not crazy, the second interpreter's assertion, that this is a bureau, will be acceptable to the first interpreter. If you are crazy, the first interpreter's viewpoint, the tiger theory, will prevail. The trouble here is that the first interpreter actually sees a tiger. The messages sent between neurons are incorrect somehow. The chemicals triggered are the wrong chemicals, or the impulses are going to the wrong connections. Apparently, this happens often, but the second interpreter jumps in to straighten things out.”

“Maybe, there's a moment growing up when something peels back... Maybe, maybe, we look for secrets because we can't believe our mind.”

“In the parallel universe the laws of physics are suspended.What goes up does not necessarily come down, a body at rest does not tend to stay atrest and not every action can be counted on to provoke an equal and opposite reaction.Time, 'too, is different. It may run in circles, flow backward, skip about from now tothen. The very arrangement of molecules is fluid: Tables can be clocks, faces,flowers.”

“Whatever we call it - mind, character, soul - we like to think we possess something that is greater than the sum of our neurons and that animates us. ”

“I know what it's like to want to die. How it hurts to smile. How you try to fit in but you can't. How you hurt yourself on the outside to try to kill the thing on the inside.”