He [Nicolaus Steno] told the audience, "Beautiful is what we see. More beautiful is what we understand. Most beautiful is what we do not comprehend.

We children of schizophrenics are the great secret keepers, the ones who don't want you to think that anything is wrong.

Children of the mentally ill learn early on how not to be a bother, especially if they grew up with neglect. As my sister insisted once, when she was in severe pain after injuring her ankle, 'This isn't me! This is not who I am!

We humans are different - our brains are built not to fix memories in stone but rather to transform them, our recollections in their retelling.

Some of my old memories feel trapped in amber in my brain, lucid and burning, while others are like the wing beat of a hummingbird, an intangible, ephemeral blur.

Our peasant music, naturally, is invariably tonal, if not always in the sense that the inflexible major and minor system is tonal.