Graziano Quotes & Sayings

You can increase your pleasure if you're willing to do things that don't feel good at first. — Loretta Graziano Breuning

If you want to be happy with your music all the time, start exposing yourself to unfamiliar music now, so it will be in the sweet spot by the time you've worn out the old pleasures. — Loretta Graziano Breuning

Repetition takes time, but it builds behaviors with fewer side effects. If you expose yourself to something over and over, it can "grow on you." You can get to like things that are good for you, even if you don't like them instantly. But who wants to repeat something over and over if it doesn't feel good? Usually, people don't, which is why we tend to rely on the circuits built by accidents of experience. You will be shaped by accident unless you start repeating things by choice. — Loretta Graziano Breuning

Many people stimulate that good serotonin feeling by trying to rescue others. Feeling like a hero is a reliable way to stimulate your serotonin. But the good feeling soon passes and you have to rescue again. Sometimes rescuers reward bad behavior in others because they are so eager to rescue. — Loretta Graziano Breuning

Reality can't live up to your expectations because you keep building new expectations. — Loretta Graziano Breuning

I don't know, I'm not from this neighborhood."-to Jake LaMotta after a night of drinking when LaMotta asked "is that the sun or the moon? — Rocky Graziano

The fight for survival is the fight — Rocky Graziano

Of course, dopamine didn't evolve for crossing arbitrary lines on the ground. It evolved to release energy when you're about to meet a survival need. If an ape climbs a high tree for a delicious mango, dopamine spurts as he nears the reward. That tells his body to release the reserve tank of energy, which helps him do what it takes to meet his needs. He doesn't say "I did it!" in words, but neurochemicals create that feeling without need for words. — Loretta Graziano Breuning

She knew that the only love her demon was capable of was self-destructive, cruel, vampiric, parasitic, and all the other words her best friends had used to describe Jerry, Alec, Christian, Matt, and the others whose names, faces, and genitalia had now blurred together in her memories. They were men incapable of love yet able to inspire suicide threats. — Nancy A. Collins

child, the happy chemicals built connections. When — Loretta Graziano Breuning

I was the best street fighter in history when I was growing up on the Lower East Side. Hell, I never lost a street fight. Never. I thought I could lick Jack Dempsey or Joe Louis or anybody. I was fantastic. — Rocky Graziano

On the way here this guy steps up to us and says, 'Would you like to join Jehovah's Witnesses?' and Rocky (Graziano) says 'I didn't see nuttin!' — Jake LaMotta

Hey ma, your bad boy did good! — Rocky Graziano

We depend on each other to lift ourselves up. Suffering is craving is fear is delusion clinging to selfhood, clinging to objects, clinging to the trivia that we think makes us happy. Clinging to superficialities. Clinging to the covering that separates us from each other. Strip off all that delusion, and we take a step forward toward each other and a step toward enlightenment. — Michael S.A. Graziano

Music gives pleasure because your mind keeps predicting what comes next. Each correct prediction triggers dopamine. You can't make good predictions for unfamiliar music, so you don't get the dopamine. But when music is too familiar, something strange happens. You don't get the dopamine either because your brain predicts it effortlessly. To make you happy, music must be at the sweet spot of novelty and familiarity. — Loretta Graziano Breuning

You react to crisis the right way. You remember what Toynbee says? His theory of challenge and response applies not only to nations, but to individuals. Some nations and some people melt in the heat of crisis and come apart like fat in the pan. Others meet the challenge and harden. I think you're going to harden. — Pat Frank

Cynicism is popular because it stimulates the brain chemicals that make you feel good. It stimulates dopamine by making the world feel predictable. It triggers serotonin by making you feel superior to "the jerks." It triggers oxytocin by telling you who to trust. You pay a high price for these moments, unfortunately, because cynicism keeps you focused on problems instead of opportunities. — Loretta Graziano Breuning

If thou followeth a wall far enough, there must be a door in it. — Marguerite De Angeli

The reality is your bosses or clients never ask for fastest spreadsheets. They ask for most usable, accurate and simple ones. — Purnachandra Rao Duggirala

I give in to nothing or nobody. Cut me, break my bones, it was all the same. — Rocky Graziano

Things go wrong occasionally, but when you focus on that, you miss the enormity of what goes right. — Loretta Graziano Breuning

When a monkey loses a banana to a rival, he feels bad, but he doesn't expand the problem by thinking about it over and over. He looks for another banana. He ends up feeling rewarded rather than harmed. Humans use their extra neurons to construct theories about bananas and end up constructing pain. — Loretta Graziano Breuning

Hey, Ma, your bad boy done it! — Rocky Graziano

Identifying a potential threat feels curiously good. You're like a gazelle that smells a lion and can't relax until it sees where the lion is. Seeing a lion feels good when the alternative is worse. We seek evidence of threats to feel safe, and we get a dopamine boost when we find what we seek. You can also get a serotonin boost from the feeling of being right, and an oxytocin boost from bonding with those who sense the same threat. This is why people seem oddly pleased to find evidence of doom and gloom. But the pleasure doesn't last because the "do something" feeling commands your attention again. You can end up feeling bad a lot even if you're successful in your survival efforts. — Loretta Graziano Breuning

A lizard never thinks something is wrong with the world, even as it watches its young get eaten alive. It doesn't tell itself "something is wrong with the world," because it doesn't have enough neurons to imagine the world being other than what it is. It doesn't expect a world in which there is no predators, so it doesn't condemn the world for falling short of expectations. it doesn't condemn itself for failing to keep its offspring alive. Humans expect more, and we do something about it. That's why we end up focused on our disappointments instead of saluting our accomplishments. — Loretta Graziano Breuning

had felt good to have someone explicitly value something that she did. — Joseph Fink

Varys smiled. "Here, then. Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less." "So power is a mummer's trick?" "A shadow on the wall," Varys murmured, — George R R Martin

You may say you're "anti-status," but if you filled a room with people who said that, they would soon form a status hierarchy based on how anti-status each person claims to be. — Loretta Graziano Breuning

Everybody who is young is promising. The world should sue the young for breach of promise. — Rocky Graziano

So we invent reasons for the unreasonable. We are rationalists of the irrational. It — Joyce Carol Oates

I worked with Rocky Graziano and Rocky was certainly a character. — Dick Schaap

It took me nine years to get through the fourth grade. When I got into television commercials, I had to take a crash course in reading. I was 32 years old, and I couldn't read the cue cards. — Rocky Graziano

I never stole nuttin' unless it began with an 'A' - A truck, a car, a payroll ... ! — Rocky Graziano

I quit school in the sixth grade because of pneumonia. Not because I had it, but because I couldn't spell it. — Rocky Graziano

Maybe if Graziano make another work or another sport I wouldn't have had this passion to be a rider. — Valentino Rossi

The more boring a newspaper is, the more it is respected. The most respected newspaper in the United States is The New York Times, which has thousands of reporters constantly producing enormous front-page stories about bauxite ... The [New York] Post would write about bauxite only if famous celebrites were arrested for snorting it in an exclusive Manhattan nightclub. — Dave Barry

A mouse who fails to get the cheese tries again without kicking herself for being an idiot. — Loretta Graziano Breuning