Debbie Foster

It was like this passage opened an unnoticed door into a new chamber of my heart, or my brain, or a shortcut between the two. I didn't know if it had just appeared, or if it had always been there, a primordial part of my being. Suddenly it was clear to me that books did not work on everyone the way they worked on me, on Roland, on A. S. Byatt. I kn

Memory is shown to be not so much a library but more a repository of ready-to-run routines that enable our daily living.

. through the [cave] paintings the animals are drawn into the notional world of human beings. This notional world stands in the same relation to the external world as the self does in relation to the inner world; it prevents us from vanishing into it.

Both the self and the notional world are immaterial entities, they don't exist in the same way elem

that idea—that information from the future “refluxes” to influence us in the present—is actually a very reasonable one, having increasing scientific support and plausibility.

If you’re skeptical of any prescriptive advice to begin with, if “less certainty, more inquiry” is your guiding light, not only will you listen; you will adjust. You will grow. And if that’s not self-awareness and self-discipline, I don’t know what is.

Disruptions inevitably interrupt our choreographed routines, but we can learn to dance with them. Finding your footing again is a two-step process, much like the two-step rhythmic pattern in various folk traditions. You must first explore the subjective experience with curiosity before calmly confronting the objective issues.

He was not so much a vision as a mass of energy configured in a deeply familiar way as my father.

Those knobs or wads of used gum, with their genital shapes—they're tiny monuments to contemplation, really. Each one memorializes a distinct passage of mind. The thoughts are flown, but the gum remains. Get it on your shoe, wrap it round your heart, and think of me.

Our language-based theories of how our minds work don't often succeed in explaining how our minds actually work, for so many layers of the mind's operations occur prior to the stories and explanations we offer with language. Neuroscience is helpful in capturing more subconscious processes.