TOTO

“Я оглядел пустой чемодан. На дне - Карл Маркс. На крышке - Бродский. А между ними - пропащая, бесценная жизнь.”
― Сергей Довлатов, The Suitcase

“It is very heartening to know that even when we get it wrong (i.e. being human) we can make it right with authenticity and kindness.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, A Matter of Death and Life

“Criminalization and interdiction have filled prisons and corrupted governments in country after country. However, increasingly potent drugs that can be synthetized in any basement make controlling access increasingly impossible. Legalization seems like a good idea but causes more addiction. Our strongest defense is likely to be education, but scare stories make kids want to try drugs. Every child should learn that drugs take over the brain and turn some people into miserable zombies and that we have no way to tell who will get addicted the fastest. They should also learn that the high fades as addiction takes over.”
― Randolph M. Nesse, Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

“Most chemicals that give humans a buzz evolved to disrupt insect nervous systems. If our brains used different chemicals, we would not be so vulnerable. However, we have common ancestors with insects. It was long ago, about 500 million years ago, when our ancestors split off from the arthropod lines that became modern insects. However, our neurochemicals remain about the same as theirs. Fortunately, most plant neurotoxins don’t kill us. We have evolved to eat plants, and we are much larger than insects, so low doses are not fatal. But drugs can hijack our motivation mechanisms and take control of our lives.”
― Randolph M. Nesse, Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry