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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Know your priorities and identify the five powerful action steps that you intend to take to move your initiatives forward each day. If you go to a tree with an ax and take five whacks at the tree every day, it doesn't matter if it's an oak or a redwood; eventually, the tree has to fall down.
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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 will tell the truth wherever I please.
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I found it stimulating to study the sciences. It was a side of understanding the universe that I hadn't been exposed to.
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I never thought I would go to Gaza. It's incredibly difficult to get into, and when you get there, it's a war zone. Then they have this beach, and there's this incredible, vibrant beach culture there, which is something that I grew up with in Southern California.
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If you look at countries like South Africa, where you had a black majority, there have been efforts to tax and help that black majority, but it hasn't come in the form of a formal reparations program.
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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.
