Date: 1791, 1794

"My daily employment is to think of you and weep, to pray for your happiness and deplore my own folly: my nights are scarce more happy, for if by chance I close my weary eyes, and hope some small forgetfulness of sorrow, some little time to pass in sweet oblivion, fancy, still waking, wafts me ho...

— Rowson, Susanna (1762-1828)

Date: 1799

"My meditations had been ardently pursued, and, when I recalled my attention, I found myself bewildered among fields and fences."

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Date: 1799

"My thoughts flowed with tumult and rapidity."

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Date: 1800

"The pen is a pacifyer. It checks the mind's career; it circumscribes her wanderings."

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Date: 1999

"A soul was like a worm in an apple, my mother told me."

— Offill, Jenny (b. 1968)

Date: June 19, 2000

"The words slid from my brain, and knotted in my stomach."

— Packer, ZZ (b. 1973)

Date: 2006

"Weber still saw the rarest of butterflies, fluttering mind, its paired wings pinned to the film in obscene detail."

— Powers, Richard (b. 1957)