"Intelligence carries conscious beings to a point where their theories are no longer useful to them, where hard-won objectivity drowns in a glut of complexity […] So creative work displaces analysis, and science becomes performative and playful."

“He showed that declarative memory – the storage and retrieval of facts – was dependent on the hippocampus. Non-declarative memory – ‘knowing how’, rather than ‘knowing that’ – functioned independently of the temporal lobe structures he had lost.”

“In short, Grant suddenly and fully developed charm, a quality that is tantalizing because it simultaneously demands detachment and engagement. Only the self-aware can have charm: It’s bound up with a sensibility that at best approaches wisdom, or at least worldliness, and at worst goes well beyond cynicism.”

‘The problem is that as it’s grown easier to be remarkable and unusual, it’s arguably grown harder to be ordinary. To be the kind of person who doesn’t want to write his own life script, or invent her own idiosyncratic career path. To enjoy the stability and comfort of inherited obligations and expectations, rather than constantly having to strike out on your own. To follow a “little way” rather than a path of great ambition.’

“We have entered a new age of fulfillment, in which the great dream is to trade up from money to meaning.” –Roman Krznaric