Date: 1922

"Fed and feeding brains about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with faintly beating feelers: and in my mind's darkness a sloth of the underworld, reluctant, shy of brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds."

— Joyce, James (1882-1941)

Date: November, 1930

"What's in your mind, my dove, my coney; / Do thoughts grow like feathers, the dead end of life; / Is it making of love or counting of money, / Or raid on the jewels, the plans of a thief?"

— Auden, W. H. (1907-1973)

Date: 1936

"Lids closed, the eyes are watchful; the brain / carefully stalks the thought like a tiger / following the accurately-scented prey / through tangled jungle foliage."

— Edwin Rolfe (1909-1954)

Date: March 17, 1950 [2005]

"One of those involuntary revealing thoughts one surprises, running like a rat through the muck-heap of my mind: Maybe I'll be able to afford that ikon if he goes."

— Friend, Donald (1915-1989)

Date: 1952

De la partie la plus noire de mon âme, à travers la zone hachurée me monte ce désir d'être tout à coup blanc [Out of the blackest part of my soul, through the zone of hachures, surges up this desire to be suddenly white].

— Fanon, Frantz (1925-1961)

Date: 1956

"All the old people I know have had their minds locked up like grey, scaly oysters since they were in their teens."

— Durrell, Gerald (1925-1995)

Date: 1958

"Such hectic extremes of gloom and gaiety are, indeed, characteristic of the manic-depressive, as with poor Crabbe's wife; in such persons the superego sits, as it were, like a great baleful cat, while the poor little cowed mouse of an ego creeps about with its tail between its legs; but at inter...

— Lucas, F. L. (1894-1967)

Date: 1965

"The ripe brain rotting like a yellow nut / Hatching / Its babel of sea-lice, sandfly, and maggot."

— Walcott, Derek (b. 1930)

Date: 1975, 1976

"The mind is like a monkey swinging from branch to branch through a forest, says the Sutra. In order not to lose sight of the monkey by some sudden movement, we must watch the monkey constantly and even to be one with it."

— Thich Nhat Hanh (b. October 11, 1926)

Date: 1975, 1976

"Wherever the mind goes, it still lies in the harness of the mind. The Sutra sometimes uses the expression "Bind the monkey" to refer to taking hold of the mind. But the monkey image is only a means of expression. Once the mind is directly and continually aware of itself, it is no longer like a m...

— Thich Nhat Hanh (b. October 11, 1926)