Leonard Mlodinow

You have to have passion for a subject to write about it. You can't expect your readers to feel any excitement if it's nothing but a boring writing exercise for you.

Whatever I've worked on, I've always tried to make my writing personal. I think that's what makes my books somewhat different from what other scientists are doing. You have to tie concepts into everyday life, or they just won't be interesting for readers.

I just really loved films and thought I should be writing screenplays.

Whether it's fiction or nonfiction, writing takes me to another world.

Social rejection doesn't just cause emotional pain; it affects our physical being.

The truth is that our unconscious minds are active, purposeful, and independent. Hidden they may be, but their effects are anything but, for they play a critical role in shaping the way our conscious minds experience and respond to the world.

We perceive, we remember our experiences, we make judgments, we act - and in all of these endeavors, we are influenced by factors that we aren't aware of.

Every aspect of our lives plays out in two versions: one conscious, which we are constantly aware of, and the other unconscious, which remains hidden from us.

Just as our brains fill in the details of an image our eyes record only roughly, so, too, do our brains employ tricks we are unaware of to fill in details about people we don't know intimately.

We unwittingly judge products by their boxes, books by their covers, and even corporation's annual reports by their nice glossy finish.

When judging a product, we rarely have exhaustive scientific data to go by. As a result, if we are to form a complete picture, we must fill in the blanks, just as we must in our visual perception.

If memories were indeed like what a camera records, they could be forgotten, or they could fade so that they are no longer clear and vivid. But it would be difficult to explain how people could have memories that are both clear and vivid while also being wrong. Yet that happens, and it is not infrequent.

Touch seems to be such an important tool for enhancing social cooperation and affiliation that we have evolved a special physical route along which those subliminal feelings of social connection travel from skin to brain.

On the unconscious level, touch seems to impart a subliminal sense of caring and connection.

French culture is known for many great attributes, some of which probably have nothing to do with food, wine, and romance.

By subliminal, I mean things that occur in our world that are below the threshold of consciousness but do have a psychological effect on us.

I've always loved science, as far back as I can remember. I was very, very curious about how everything worked: the world, the physical universe, chemistry, law. So it was only natural to be curious about how our mind works.

I think the fun of following the movie box office and stocks is very similar to the fun of sports - all three combine passion and unpredictability.

Intentionality and talent always matter. An extraordinary feat is certainly made more likely by someone's focus, hard work, etc. But chance also matters.

The attacks on global warming are no different than the attacks the cigarettes companies used to use to say that cigarettes don't cause cancer.