Date: 1992

"If he was essentially a thinking machine, then he needed to be serviced."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 1992

"If your mind works like a cash register, anything you come up with is bound to be cheap"

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 1992

"Only this violence could break open a world constrained by the hidden cameras of conscience and vanity."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 1998

"Vernon slumped with his tea while his mental odometer tallied the insults and humiliations."

— McEwan, Ian (b. 1948)

Date: 2000

"This lonely organ, which has appeared to be imprisoned in the skull, tormenting intellectuals throughout history,' said Jean-Paul merrily, 'may after all be a transceiver, tuning into various types of extraphysical mind, and contributing to them with its own broadcasts.'"

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 2006

"The neurologist made the brain sound more rickety than the old toy trucks Mark used to assemble from discarded cabinet parts and sawn-off detergent bottles."

— Powers, Richard (b. 1957)

Date: 2006

"'What we think of as a single, simple process,' Weber wrote, 'is in fact a long assembly line. Vision requires careful coordination between thirty-two or more separate brain modules. Recognizing a face takes at least two dozen.'"

— Powers, Richard (b. 1957)

Date: 2006

"We are hard-wired for finding faces."

— Powers, Richard (b. 1957)

Date: 2006

"Back at Dayton Chaminade High, Weber had begun intellectual life as a confirmed Freudian--brain as hydraulic pipe for mind's spectacular waterworks--anything to confound his priest teachers."

— Powers, Richard (b. 1957)

Date: 2006

"He knew the drill: throughout history, the brain had been compared to the highest prevailing level of technology: steam engine, telephone switchboard, computer."

— Powers, Richard (b. 1957)