"The mind is never beyond redemption, for no environment can extinguish neurogenesis. As long as we are alive, important parts of the brain are dividing. The brain is not marble, it is clay, and our clay never hardens."
"He structured his argument around vivid examples stolen straight from real life, such as encountering a bear in the woods. 'What kind of an emotion of fear,' he wondered, 'would be left [after seeing the bear] if the feeling of quickened heart beats nor of shallow breathing, neither of trembling lips nor of weakened limbs, neither of goose bumps nor of visceral stirrings, were present?' James's answer was simple: without the body there would be no fear, for an emotion begins as the perception of a bodily change. When it comes the the drama of feelings, our flesh is the stage.
The moral of this book is that we are made of art and science. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, but we are also just stuff. We now know enough about the brain to realize that its mystery will always remain. Like a work of art, we exceed our materials. Science needs art to frame the mystery, but art needs science so that not everything is a mystery. Neither truth alone is our solution for our reality exists in plural.
Our truth, they said, must begin with us, with what reality feels like.