George Pelecanos Quotes

The limbic system explodes during puberty, but the prefrontal cortex keeps maturing for another 10 years.

Kids are different from adults. They are not as developed as far as brain science, controlling impulses, and maturity, and fall prey to all kinds of pressures.

What adolescence is about is by trial and error, honing a frontal cortex that is going to be more optimal by the time you're 25.

We are like a rider on top of a gigantic elephant. We can steer the elephant, and if he's not busy, he'll go where we want, but if he has other desires, he'll often go where he wants. How can one control the elephant? In part, this comes with maturity. In part, this comes with the development of your frontal cortex, so the frontal areas of the brain are especially involved in self-control, in suppressing your initial instinct to act. This is why teenagers are so impulsive. So it's terrible to allow the death penalty for teenagers, because they really don't have working brains yet.

The idea that the brain is not fully formed until you are almost 30 years old has already been introduced, and the Supreme Court already has based two rulings on it.

Mindful meditation has been discovered to foster the ability to inhibit those very quick emotional impulses.

I veer away from trying to understand why I act. I just know I need to do it.

I think that the consciousness of passion makes you act very differently.

Teenagers blithely skip off to uncertain futures, while their parents sit weeping curbside in the Volvo, because the adolescent brain isn't yet formed enough to recognize and evaluate risk.

My wife says I have a frontal lobe issue. Your frontal lobe controls your danger response, like, 'Whoa, I shouldn't be doing this.'

If we become aware of what's happening before we act, behaviour becomes a function of choice rather than a result of an impulse or trigger. You begin to control your world more as opposed to the outside world controlling you.

The part of the brain most affected by early stress is the prefrontal cortex, which is critical in self-regulatory activities of all kinds, both emotional and cognitive. As a result, children who grow up in stressful environments generally find it harder to concentrate, harder to sit still, harder to rebound from disappointments, and harder to follow directions. And that has a direct effect on their performance in school.

It is a youthful failing to be unable to control one's impulses.

He that discovers himself, till he hath made himself master of his desires, lays himself open to his own ruin, and makes himself prisoner to his own tongue.

The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs.

At the age of 18 I don't think that I thought very differently than I did at the age of 25. I think we instinctively have the knowledge and adapt the knowledge we need.

The human brain is by no means fully formed at birth. It continues to shape itself through life, with the most intense growth occurring during childhood.

If I am acting out in any particular way that is harmful to myself - without a shadow of doubt, there is a feeling suppressed under wanting that second candy bar. Often, it is that little voice I haven't paid attention to. It's generally not the adult voice. If I take a moment to address that and figure out what that is, the desire for the candy bar seems to dissipate.

Mathematics may be a way of developing physically, that is anatomically, new connections in the brain.

The young folks that are coming into each of your services are anywhere from 17 to 22 or 23. Gee whiz, the hormone level created by nature sets in place the possibility for these types of things to occur. So we've got to be very careful how we address it on our side.

As a quick aside, let me observe that in moments of high emotion....if the next thing you're going to say makes you feel better, then it's probably the wrong thing to say. This is one of the finer maxims that I've discovered in life. And you can have it, since it's been of no use to me.

The specifically human capacity for language enables children to provide for auxiliary tools in the solution of difficult tasks, to overcome impulsive action, to plan a solution to a problem prior to its execution, and to master their own behavior.

For the first time, the object of what I want is more important than fulfilling my desires.

Adolescence begins when children stop asking questions-because they know all the answers.

Each day look into your conscience and amend your faults; if you fail in this duty you will be untrue to the Knowledge and Reason that are within you. Keep a watchful eye over yourself as if you were your own enemy; for you cannot learn to govern yourself, unless you first learn to govern your own passions and obey the dictates of your conscience.