Leaving Time

by Jodi Picoult

memory is linked to strong emotion, and that negative moments are like scribbling with permanent marker on the wall of the brain.

I always get the funniest expressions from colleagues when I tell them that the best scientists understand that 2–3 percent of whatever it is they are studying is simply not quantifiable—it may be magic or aliens or random variance, none of which can be truly ruled out. If we are to be honest as scientists … we must admit there may be a few things that we are not supposed to know.

Even if elephants come across the body of another elephant that has been long dead, its remains picked apart by hyenas and its skeleton scattered, they bunch and get tense. They approach the carcass as a group, and caress the bones with what can only be described as reverence. They stroke the dead elephant, touching it all over with their trunks and their back feet. They will smell it. They might pick up a tusk or a bone and carry it for a while. They will place even the tiniest bit of ivory under their feet and gently rock back and forth.

You can’t blame someone if they honestly don’t understand that their reality isn’t the same as yours.

There are also some people who cannot forget. People with PTSD may have smaller hippocampi than ordinary people. Some scientists believe that corticoids—stress hormones—can atrophy the hippocampus and cause memory disruptions.

Maybe growing up is just focusing on what you’ve got, instead of what you don’t.

In the wild, a mother and daughter stay together until one of them dies.

In Tswana, there is a saying: Go o ra motho, ga go lelwe. Where there is support, there is no grief.