The mind thinks upon, processes, and remembers what the senses forget.

The brain, he writes, is like Kublai Khan, the great Mongol emperor of the thirteenth century. It sits enthroned in its skull, “encased in darkness and silence,” at a lofty remove from brute reality. Messengers...

For me, writing is just processing.

Learning, without any opportunities to share what we’ve learned, is a little like cooking for ourselves; we do it, but we probably won’t do it as well.