Quotes About Instinct

The question is: what would you like to be, a dog or a wolf?

Many kids would learn to love mathematics if they had some investment in it, and, more crucially, they would build an instinct to spot its misapplications.

There are many things without words, matters that we know and can act on but cannot describe directly

A wolf is trained to survive.

He read it for the same reason an animal tears at a wounded foot: to hurt the pain.

Instinct" is a concept intended to bridge the gap between needs and goals, bypassing man's cognitive (i.e., reasoning and learning) faculty.

Observing certain types of behavior which they believed to be characteristic of the human species, instinct theorists decided that the causes of such behavior are innate, unchosen, and unlearned tendencies which drive man to act as he does.

The road grew wilder and drearier and more faintly traced, and vanished at length, leaving him in the heart of the dark wilderness, still rushing onward with the instinct that guides mortal man to evil.

survival is a dance between our needs and our consciences.

Sometimes you have to be the monster to survive

Should I push him or should I throw him? Howie asks. Do what comes naturally, I yelled back. I don't know, he says. This is a very unnatural thing.

Book smarts are nice like heelies are nice: They'll only get you so far, until you have to use your freaking feet. In fight-or-flight situations it's the street smarts that will get you out alive.

In nature even the most hideous of creatures are attracted to one another.

Death by fire is the only natural death left.

Another part of him wanted to howl to the moon like a wolf.

if it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don't do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don't do it.

Whores are natural

Generally, I decided, it was better to wait, if you had any feeling for the individual. If you hated her right off, it was better to fuck her right off; if you didn't, it was better to wait, then fuck her and hate her later on.

What is your advice to young writers? Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes. What is your advice to older writers? If you're still alive, you don't need any advice. What is the impulse that makes you create a poem? What makes you take a shit?

if it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don't do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don't do it.

I looked around for a fly to kill

And now I wonder which animal of us will eat the other first physically and last spiritually? We consume animals and then one of us consumes the other, my love.

and as the worms pant for your bones, I would so like to tell you that this happens to bears and elephants

Two bulls fighting for the cow. And a bony one at that. But in America the loser oftentimes got the cow. Mother instinct? Better wallet? Longer dick? God knows what.…