“Toxins love to get you while you're young. Lead, mercury, secondhand smoke and sundry other environmental nasties do a lot more damage when tissue is immature, vulnerable and growing than when it's mature and comparatively fixed.”
Environmental
“Becoming food savvy is one thing, but it's amazing how fast savvy turns to snooty, and snooty leaves you preparing three-hour meals that break your budget and that the kids won't even eat.”
AmazingAll Quotes by Jeffrey Kluger
“Credit or debit cards, for starters, are nothing short of shoppers' Novocain. Even in the age of digital purchases and virtual money, we still attach a special value to dirty paper with pictures of presidents on it. Handing some of that to a cashier simply hurts more than handing over a little sliver of plastic.”
Age“A close family member once offered his opinion that I exhibit the phone manners of a goat, then promptly withdrew the charge - out of fairness to goats.”
Family“Psychopaths know the technical difference between right and wrong - which is one of the reasons their insanity pleas in criminal cases so rarely succeed they just fail to act on that knowledge.”
Knowledge“The mind of the polyglot is a very particular thing, and scientists are only beginning to look closely at how acquiring a second language influences learning, behavior and the very structure of the brain itself.”
Learning“My family went through divorces and remarriages and the later, blended home - and then watched that home explode, too.”
Family“My own life has in some ways been a decades-long tour of the sibling experience. I have full sibs, I have half-sibs, and for a time I had step-sibs.”
Experience“There are a lot of obstacles in the way of our understanding animal intelligence - not the least being that we can't even agree whether nonhuman species are conscious. We accept that chimps and dolphins experience awareness we like to think dogs and cats do. But what about mice and newts? What about a fly? Is anything going on there at all?”
Experience“Science has yet to isolate the Godiva Chocolate or Prada gene, but that doesn't mean your weakness for pricey swag isn't woven into your DNA. According to a new study of identical twins, it's less TV ads or Labor Day sales that make you buy the things you do than the tastes and temperaments that are already part of you at birth.”
Science“At the root of the shy temperament is a deep fear of social judgment, one so severe it can sometimes be crippling. Introverted people don't worry unduly about whether they'll be found wanting, they just find too much socializing exhausting and would prefer either to be alone or in the company of a select few people.”
Alone“There's only one thing harder than living in a home with an adolescent - and that's being an adolescent. The moodiness, the volatility, the wholesale lack of impulse control, all would be close to clinical conditions if they occurred at another point in life. In adolescence, they're just part of the behavioral portfolio.”
Home“There's a sort of sibling moratorium when you're establishing yourself as an adult. So much of your energy has to be focused on other things like work and kids. But when people become more settled, siblings tend to regroup because now you're building a new extended family.”
Family“Older fatherhood isn't all bad: testosterone rates drop about 1% per year as men age, making them less reactive and more patient, and a professionally established middle-aged man is likely to have more time and money to devote to his kids than a twenty-something who's just getting started.”
Age“Paul McCartney had a baby when he was 61 Rod Stewart was 66 Rupert Murdoch was a stunning 72. Not only does that mean they'll have less stamina than the average dad, that means they'll, well, check out a lot sooner too.”
Dad“The families of many athletes - incensed at the sports leagues and hoping to make games safer overall - are increasingly making the brains of players who die prematurely and suspiciously available for study. Some athletes are even making the bequest themselves.”
Sports“Habitual texters may not only cheat their existing relationships, they can also limit their ability to form future ones since they don't get to practice the art of interpreting nonverbal visual cues.”
Future“Vaccines save lives fear endangers them. It's a simple message parents need to keep hearing.”
Fear“Learning to speak was the most remarkable thing you ever did.”
Learning“Since narcissism is fueled by a greater need to be admired than to be liked, psychologists might use that fact as a therapeutic lever - stressing to patients that being known as a narcissist will actually cause them to lose the respect and social status they crave.”
Respect“In both children and adults, there can be a hard-to-deny link between a robust sense of hope and either work productivity or academic achievement.”
Hope