Maria Konnikova

“At the end, we can embrace and love whatever we want of an author's work. But we also can't ignore a writer's express wish just because we don't happen to agree with it.”

“Understanding the psychology of changing norms starts from a simple insight: although we may wish to be perfectly rational and impartial, bias is an inescapable part of what it means to be human.”

“Bullying is the result of an unequal power dynamic - the strong attacking the weak.”

“Once the notion of time travel starts to come naturally to the human mind, it is supremely easy to assimilate it into our mode of thinking.”

“For as long as writers have written, they've had second thoughts about their work.”

“Humans are startlingly bad at detecting fraud. Even when we're on the lookout for signs of deception, studies show, our accuracy is hardly better than chance.”

“It's not at all a far jump to think that overall perceptions of gender - and what is and is not important in gender roles - would carry over from life to fiction.”

“And, when it comes to politics, it can be awfully difficult to put your desires aside and to acknowledge that the world is a much messier place, where open-minded people might be conservative and liberals may well be conscientious.”

“Fraud really thrives in moments of great social change and transition. We're in the midst of a technological revolution. That gives con artists huge opportunities. People lose their frame of reference for what can and can't be real.”

“Much of the excitement about virtual reality has come from the gaming community.”

“Our lives don't make sense in abstraction, only when compared with the lives of others.”

“Of course, authors can still burn their manuscripts - but once something is out in the world, especially if it ever saw the digital light of day, it's harder and harder to call it back.”

“Each of us has a network of emotional and logical associations that is unique to us. Activate one mode of the association, and you activate a predictable pattern of behavior. A situation isn't just the external events that take place; it is how each individual processes those events and integrates them into her thoughts and feelings.”

“There will be great books. There will be great films. Sometimes, if we are lucky, the two will intersect.”

“Where anger can be seen as a relative positive in a man, it is hardly ever perceived as anything other than a negative in a woman.”

“The cognitive skills that underpin resilience, then, seem like they can indeed be learned over time, creating resilience where there was none.”

“One of the things that women really excel at is reading and reacting to subtle cues. We've always had to do that because men don't have to.”

“The major problem with most attempts to predict a specific outcome, such as interviews, is decontextualization: the attempt takes place in a generalized environment, as opposed to the context in which a behavior or trait naturally occurs.”

“No one is ever bias-free, but some people let their biases influence their actions more than others.”