Three statements

Last night as I walked down the street, I suddenly came face-to-face with the skunk whose aroma had been permeating the neighbourhood. The two of us stood motionless, presumably sizing each other up. Then I turned and walked sideways away from the creature, and he quickly reciprocated. We passed each other without incident. The whole busines left me fulfulled and re-rnerized briefly.

I was shocked when I heard the hypothesis that the brain and the mind are one and the same called "shocking". There is a very simple proof of this hypothesis: anyone who has ever taken a mind-altering drug. We know a great deal about how various drugs work. They happen to mimic the shapes of certain metabolites and cause various blockages or enhancements of acivity. If the drug acts on the nervous system, the mind tends to get altered. It's just like throwing a large hunk of metal into a nineteenth-century factory machine. One would expect it to stop or hiccup violently. Luckily for us, minor alterations in the activity of our beautiful machine mind only cause slightly altered means of perceiving, processing and/or behaving.

Neon lights in heavy fog--the way they reflect and diffuse, threading their way through suspended droplets in the air--are phenomenologically equivalent to angels.

Consider: "it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages."