Skyler Autumn

“Foreign experiences increase both cognitive flexibility and depth and integrativeness of thought,”
― Maggie O'Farrell, I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death

“After he had sailed around the Mediterranean in 1869, Mark Twain said that travel was “fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” Neuroscientists have been trying for years to pin down what it is about travel that alters us, how it effects mental change. Neural pathways become ingrained, automatic, if they operate only by habit. They are highly attuned to alterations, to novelty. New sights, sounds, languages, tastes, smells stimulate different synapses in the brain, different message routes, different webs of connection, increasing our neuroplasticity. Our brains have evolved to notice differences in our environment: it’s how we’re alerted to predators, to potential danger. To be sensitive to change, then, is to ensure survival.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death

“The people who teach us something retain a particularly vivid place in our memories.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death

“There is a kind of sadness in not wanting the things that give so many other people their life's meaning. There can be sadness at not living out a more universal story - the suppose life cycle - how out of one life cycle another cycle is supposed to come. But when out of your life, no new cycle comes, what does that feel like? It feels like nothing. Yet there is a bit of a let-down feeling when the great things that happen in the lives of others - you don't actually want those things for yourself.”
― Sheila Heti, Motherhood