In examining disease, we gain wisdom about anatomy and physiology and biology. In examining the person with disease, we gain wisdom about life.
Perception is never purely in the present – it has to draw on experience of the past.
Waking consciousness is dreaming – but dreaming constrained by external reality
I find my thoughts, increasingly, not on the supernatural or spiritual but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life—achieving a sense of peace within oneself.
The power of music, whether joyous or cathartic must steal on one unawares, come spontaneously as a blessing or a grace–
Music evokes emotion and emotion can bring it’s memory.
Very young children love and demand stories, and can understand complex matters presented as stories, when their powers of comprehending general concepts, paradigms, are almost nonexistent.
As Sicknes is the greatest misery, so the greatest misery of sicknes, is solitude…Solitude is a torment which is not threatened in hell itselfe.-DONNE
We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is a part of thought.
I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential. I must focus on myself, my work, and my friends.
I was on the shy side at school (one school report called me ‘diffident’) and Braefield had added a special timidity, but when I had a natural wonder… I lost all my diffidence, and freely approached others, all my fear forgotten.
[photography]… wanted to understand, to master for myself, all the processes involved, and to manipulate them in my own way.
I liked numbers because they were solid, invariant; they stood unmoved in a chaotic world. There was in numbers and their relation something absolute, certain, not to be questioned, beyond doubt.
I am a storyteller, for better and for worse. I suspect that a feeling for stories, for narrative, is a universal human disposition, going with our powers of language, consciousness of self, and autobiographical memory.
Language, that most human invention, can enable what, in principle, should not be possible. It can allow all of us, even the congenitally blind, to see with another person’s eyes.
I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude.
At 11, I could say ‘I am sodium’ (Element 11), and now at 79, I am gold.