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All animals exhibit innate behaviors in response to specific sensory stimuli that are likely to result from the activation of developmentally programmed circuits.

Brains don't really smell, but what's amazing about the brain is that it's almost like scrambled eggs or soft tofu, almost like a gel. The brain controls so much of what we do, but you could put your finger right through it.

Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled.

Smells are so powerful and evocative, sometimes stronger than visual cues.

Smell was our first sense. It is even possible that being able to smell was the stimulus that took a primitive fish and turned a small lump of olfactory tissue on its nerve cord into a brain. We think because we smelled.

Smell is stimulating. It stirs things up and makes us nostalgic - a wonderful word which literally means 'ache for home' - which serves to inspire new circuits in the brain.

In humans, smell is often viewed as an aesthetic sense, as a sense capable of eliciting enduring thoughts and memories. Smell, however, is the primal sense. It is the sense that affords most organisms the ability to detect food, predators, and mates.

Smell is a very animal thing, almost reptilian, where the more cerebral things like reading less so.

Smell is a long-distance sense, a way of stretching time and finding out in advance what lies ahead.

One of the things that you're not really in control of - apart from everything - is your smell.