Bessel van der Kolk Quotes
As long as a memory is inaccessible, the mind is unable to change it. But as soon as a story starts being told, particularly if it is told repeatedly, it changes – the act of telling itself changes the tale. The mind cannot help but make meaning out of what it knows, and the meaning we make of our lives changes how and what we remember.

Quotes to Explore
-
I've always enjoyed poor health.
-
I don't hurt or want for visibility, but people seem to forget pretty easily.
-
Doctors cannot afford to provide care at the rate of reimbursement that Medicare insists that they accept.
-
I'm not a control freak.
-
I didn't volunteer; they asked me. I felt a duty to testify.
-
Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.
-
I think when I first straightened my hair, I was a teenager. I don't believe that I was consciously doing it to look white or to be on television. It never crossed my mind. All of the girls in my neighborhood got perms and their hair straightened. But I know that historically it was to assimilate and there are some people who do it for that reason.
-
A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.
-
To me there is no picture so beautiful as smiling, bright-eyed, happy children; no music so sweet as their clear and ringing laughter.
-
Everybody likes a compliment.
-
I'm getting better, happier, and nicer as I grow older, so I would be terrific in a couple of hundred years time.
-
All peoples have evolved extraordinarily precise ways of settling issues about the things that matter to them.
-
Stardom is only a by-product of acting. I don't think being a movie star is a good enough reason for existing.
-
I liked St. Louis, when they were in the American League, because that was going home. I had all my family and friends there.
-
Just as the Supreme Court has said that women have the right to choose whether or not to be parents, men should also have that right.
-
Mathematicians stand on each other's shoulders.
-
I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.
-
I'm not terribly confrontational, but I've gotten better at holding my ground.
-
Many parts of the granite statues were found, the most important of which had features close to Ramses II. The statue needs some restoration and weighs between four and five tons.
-
We must develop a deeper interest and greater understanding of the people we meet here or abroad. Like us, they are passengers on board that mysterious ship called life.
-
My education was very tough.
-
I can't bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd.
-
For me it's the high-water mark of American culture - not so much contemporary jazz, which has become kind of academic, but the jazz from the '20s on through the '70s.
-
As long as a memory is inaccessible, the mind is unable to change it. But as soon as a story starts being told, particularly if it is told repeatedly, it changes – the act of telling itself changes the tale. The mind cannot help but make meaning out of what it knows, and the meaning we make of our lives changes how and what we remember.