Date: 1966, 1968

"Otherwise they [the people we used to be] turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends."

— Didion, Joan (b. 1934)

Date: November 11, 1967

"Because suddenly, from a height of thousands of centuries, the first stone of an avalanche came tumbling down: it was my heart."

— Lispector, Clarice (1920-1977)

Date: November 11, 1967

"The answer is yes, but there is nothing wrong with having an oblique heart, it is a lighthouse, a compass, wisdom, sharp instinct, experience of death, the power to divine a disquieting but blissful lack of adjustment, because I am discovering that my own maladjustment stems from my origins."

— Lispector, Clarice (1920-1977)

Date: 1970

"God, what a muck-heap my mind is, thought Tallis."

— Murdoch, Iris (191-1999)

Date: 1970

"Words came without volition, sinking very slowly through his mind like pebbles."

— Murdoch, Iris (191-1999)

Date: 1970

"If it goes off / If my imagination detonates, orphans me."

— Dunlap, Mary (1949-2003)

Date: 1971, 1978

"Without the breath of life the human body is a corpse; without thinking the human mind is dead."

— Arendt, Hannah (1906-1975)

Date: April 15, 1971

"You've got a geranium in your cranium."

— Lederer, Esther [Ann Landers] (1918-2002)

Date: 1980

"What is thought after all, what is dreaming, but swim and flow, and the images they seem to animate?"

— Robinson, Marilynne (b. 1943)

Date: 1980

"And here we find our greatest affinity with water, for like reflections on water our thoughts will suffer no changing shock, no permanent displacement."

— Robinson, Marilynne (b. 1943)