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
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I've always enjoyed poor health.
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I don't hurt or want for visibility, but people seem to forget pretty easily.
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Doctors cannot afford to provide care at the rate of reimbursement that Medicare insists that they accept.
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I'm not a control freak.
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I didn't volunteer; they asked me. I felt a duty to testify.
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Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.
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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.
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A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.
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To me there is no picture so beautiful as smiling, bright-eyed, happy children; no music so sweet as their clear and ringing laughter.
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Everybody likes a compliment.
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I'm getting better, happier, and nicer as I grow older, so I would be terrific in a couple of hundred years time.
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All peoples have evolved extraordinarily precise ways of settling issues about the things that matter to them.
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Stardom is only a by-product of acting. I don't think being a movie star is a good enough reason for existing.
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I liked St. Louis, when they were in the American League, because that was going home. I had all my family and friends there.
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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.
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Mathematicians stand on each other's shoulders.
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I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.
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I'm not terribly confrontational, but I've gotten better at holding my ground.
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I would like to spend my next two years showing how the aim of making technology available to every young person can be built into the effort to make our nation more secure. That is my latest concern and what I will be pushing over the next two years.
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I enjoy doing different kinds of things. I just enjoy being not tied too much. I feel that I'm tied to myself as a kind of traditional musician and a singer, and the history that I have ties me down.
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We take the sense of touch for granted. Think about it: Without it, you're missing one of the basic senses that enables you to interact with the world.
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There either is or is not, that’s the way things are. The colour of the day. The way it felt to be a child. The saltwater on your sunburnt legs. Sometimes the water is yellow, sometimes it’s red. But what colour it may be in memory, depends on the day. I’m not going to tell you the story the way it happened. I’m going to tell it the way I remember it.
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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.
