Lauren Oliver Quotes

Most of the trouble in life comes from misunderstanding, I think,' said Anne.

Thought is so cunning, so clever, that it distorts everything for its own convenience.

There is a kink in my damned brain that prevents me from thinking as other people think.

I often make the mistake of thinking that something that is obvious to me is obvious to everyone else.

Eve talking to someone on her computer and having trouble with the language translator....."I have two like crimes. Your data and your input on Leclerk would be very helpful"Marie pursed her lips and humor danced in her eyes."It says you would like to have sex with me. I don't think that is correct""Oh, for Christ sake" Eve slammed a fist against the machine.

Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?

No one gets angry at a mathematician or a physicist whom he or she doesn't understand, or at someone who speaks a foreign language, but rather at someone who tampers with your own language.

My relationship to reality has been so utterly skewed for so long that I don't even notice it any more. It's just my reality.

It's sometimes comical to hear the younger generation ask their peers to repeat themselves.

Your paradigm is so intrinsic to your mental process that you are hardly aware of its existence, until you try to communicate with someone with a different paradigm.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

Moving forward in science is as much unwinding the distorted thinking of the past as it is putting a clearer idea on the table.

Men substitute words for reality and then argue about the words.

I came away believing and really deeply troubled by is the extent to which you can have two well-intentioned people talking in a friendly spirit and you get to a point where the two mutual mythologies just don't intersect. So kind of the next piece I'd like to write or think about is how did this left-right divide get so weird and codified.

I was starting to think I was making up memories, just to have answers. Our brain does that sometimes. Or at least mine does.

In another couple of generations, we're really gonna see the effect of this single-parent raising. And I think that's the problem. That's the disconnect. That's the miscommunication.

That’s what the human brain is there for—to turn the chaos of given experience into a set of manageable symbols. Sometimes the symbols correspond fairly closely to some of the aspects of the external reality behind our experience; then you have science and common sense. Sometimes, on the contrary, the symbols have almost no connection with external reality; then you have paranoia and delirium. More often there’s a mixture, part realistic and part fantastic; that’s religion.

I told my wife she looks sexy with black fingernails. Now she thinks I slammed the car door on her hand on purpose.

I think my brain just has a natural way of going to what would be the most insane thing, the least likely option.

Belief and delusion are incestuous siblings.

It is probably impossible to think without words, but if we permit ourselves to think with the wrong words, we shall soon be entertaining erroneous thoughts; for words, which are given us for the expression of thought, have a habit of going beyond their proper bounds and determining the content of thought.

I think that bias is not a fixed thing. It's not as though some people are biased and others are not. It ebbs and flows. It can be manipulated. It changes according to a person's circumstances.

memory is so selective; wishful thinking presses it into service all the time.

In all matters of opinion and science ... the difference between men is ... oftener found to lie in generals than in particulars; and to be less in reality than in appearance. An explication of the terms commonly ends the controversy, and the disputants are surprised to find that they had been quarrelling, while at bottom they agreed in their judgement.

It's really easy to take something small and make it big in your head and fight against it.