Date: 2009

"His mind snagged on the word like a fish on a hook."

— Nicholls, David (b. 1966)

Date: 2009

"These are some of the things // you don't have to know because the melody / is like a small bird, maybe a yellow canary, / that wings its way into your mind / --no, into your heart-- / where there's a perch already // set up for it, a little trapeze / to swing back and forth on as it sings / and...

— Raab, Lawrence (b. 1946)

Date: 2009, trans. 2012

"And when what has kept me going for the whole of my adult life, the ambition to write something exceptional one day, is threatened in this way my one thought, which gnaws at me like a rat, is that I have to escape."

— Knausgaard, Karl Ove (b. 1968)

Date: 2009, trans. 2012

"As all the thoughts and images of consciousness began to move in directions over which I had no control, and I seemed to be lying there watching them, like a kind of lazy sheepdog of the mind, I knew sleep was around the corner."

— Knausgaard, Karl Ove (b. 1968)

Date: 2009, trans. 2012

"But I didn't want to linger, nor could I perhaps, for the sensation lasted only a few moments, then my brain sank its claws into it and I went back to the kitchen where everything was as I had left it, except for the color of the drinks, which were shiny and full of small, grayish bubbles now."

— Knausgaard, Karl Ove (b. 1968)

Date: June 1, 2010

"Books live in the mind like honey inside a beehive.

— McGrath, Campbell (b. 1962)

Date: June 7, 2010

"They have yearnings and fears that reside in an inner beast you could call The Big Shaggy."

— Brooks, David (b. 1961)

Date: May 21, 2011

"My thoughts turn into the cowbirds wandering among the horses’ hooves."

— Klinkenbourg, Verlyn (b. 1952)

Date: September 2, 2011

"We speak of exerting will power, of forcing ourselves to go to work, of restraining ourselves and of controlling our temper, as if it were an unruly dog."

— Pinker, Steven (b. 1954)

Date: December 11, 2011

"The idea that down in our foundations there lie grubby creatures like desires, or passions, or needs, or culture, is like some nightmarish madwoman in the attic, and induces the same kind of reaction that met Darwin when he too drew attention to our proximity to animals rather than to angels."

— Blackburn, Simon (b. 1944)