5 Quotes by Jules Montague

We've always had a sense that there is more to us and more to the world than we can see; that there are hidden depths to be released, talents to be unveiled if only we read the right book or watched the right programme or signed up to the right subscription. If we took the right flight or the right drugs. But sometimes, creativity emerges only from the depths of destructions.

Creativity is a soup of heritability and environment and experience, of neurotransmitters and networks. Of focused attention and mind wandering. Of openness and of novelty-seeking.

With remembering, there is rebuilding. And that is the thing about memory: it's a home constantly under reconstruction, not a video playing on a loop.

In the two decades since starting at medical school, I have never heard the word 'identity' spoken. Grand rounds, the very heartbeat of medical learning, are not a place for philosophical musings or profound emotional questions. Diagnostic labels gathered there speak more to the patient and less to the person. We talk about loss of blood and loss of lung function but we do not contemplate the loss of person and the loss of self.

Think of all those times you've desperately tried to come up with solutions or concepts to no avail, only for them to drift into view when least expected. The difficulty with obsession is that there might be focus without ideas.