Music gives me a sense of self-sufficiency and nourishment. I don’t need anyone or anything. I bathe in it as in amniotic fluid; it surrounds and pro… - Gabor Maté

people jeopardize their lives for the sake of making the moment livable. Nothing sways them from the habit — not illness, not the sacrifice of love and relationship, not the loss of all earthly goods, not the crushing of their dignity, not the fear of dying. The drive is that relentless.

People and their pets connect via shared brain structures that predate the development of the human frontal cortex with its apparatus of language and rationality. Animals and humans interact from their respective limbic systems, the brain’s emotional parts. Unlike people, animals are acutely sensitive to messages from the limbic brain — both their own and that of their owners.

A tone of voice or a look in another’s eyes can activate powerful implicit memories. The person experiencing this type of memory may believe that he is just reacting to something in the present, remaining completely in the dark about what the rush of feelings that flood his mind and body really represents. Implicit memory is responsible for much of human behavior, its workings all the more influential because unconscious.