The Man Who Wasn't There Quotes

“Memory, connecting inconceivable mystery to inconceivable mystery, performs the impossible by the strength of her divine arms; holds together past and present,—beholding both,—existing in both . . . and gives continuity and dignity to human life. It holds us to our family, to our friends. Hereby a home is possible. —Ralph Waldo Emerson”
― Anil Ananthaswamy, The Man Who Wasn't There: Investigations into the Strange New Science of the Self

“The subjective emotion we feel is the brain’s best predictive guess that explains the [incoming] interoceptive information at a whole bunch of hierarchical levels,” said Seth. “It’s not just cognition looking down at physiology and interpreting it.”
― Anil Ananthaswamy, The Man Who Wasn't There: Investigations into the Strange New Science of the Self

“What gives me the right to speak of an “I,” and even of an “I” as cause, and finally of an “I” as cause of thought? . . . A thought comes when “it” wants, not when “I” want. —Friedrich Nietzsche For”
― Anil Ananthaswamy, The Man Who Wasn't There: Investigations into the Strange New Science of the Self

“Forever I shall be a stranger to myself. —Albert Camus”
― Anil Ananthaswamy, The Man Who Wasn't There: Investigations into the Strange New Science of the Self

“Laurie, too, is well aware that the voices in her head, her paranoia, the messages she thinks she’s receiving from outside, are all, in some sense, a product of her altered self. “But that insight is a paradox. Without the insight you fear the external; with the insight you fear yourself,”
― Anil Ananthaswamy, The Man Who Wasn't There: Investigations into the Strange New Science of the Self

“many people with schizophrenia can tickle themselves.”
― Anil Ananthaswamy, The Man Who Wasn't There: Investigations into the Strange New Science of the Self