Date: 1914

"He gave me the impression that he was repeating something which he had learned by heart or that, magnetised by some words of his own speech, his mind was slowly circling round and round in the same orbit"

— Joyce, James (1882-1941)

Date: 1914

"A light began to tremble on the horizon of his mind."

— Joyce, James (1882-1941)

Date: 1914

"A dull anger began to gather again at the back of his mind and the dull fires of his lust began to glow angrily in his veins."

— Joyce, James (1882-1941)

Date: 1949

"It was as though their two minds had opened and the thoughts were flowing from one into the other through their eyes."

— Orwell, George (1903-1950)

Date: April 8, 1950

"Then, abruptly, familiarly, and, as usual, with no warning, he thought he felt his mind dislodge itself and teeter, like insecure luggage on an overhead rack."

— Salinger, J.D. (1919-2010)

Date: 1949-1952, 1953

"Hard, hard work, excavating and digging, mining, moling through tunnels, heaving, pushing, moving rock, working, working, working, working, working, panting, hauling, hoisting. And none of this work is seen from the outside. It's internally done. It happens because you are powerless and unable t...

— Bellow, Saul (1915-2005)

Date: 1962

"I find it wise in such cases as this to eliminate the bother of back-and-forth leafings by either cutting out and clipping together the pages with the text of the thing, or, even more simply, purchasing two copies of the same work which can then be placed in adjacent positions on a comfortable t...

— Nabokov, Vladimir (1899-1977)

Date: 1984

"His brain was deep-fried. No, he decided, it had been thrown into hot fat and left there, and the fat had cooled, a thick dull grease congealing on wrinkled lobes, shot through with greenish-purple flashes of pain."

— Gibson, William (b. 1948)

Date: 1984

"He still had his anger. That was like being rolled in some alley and waking to discover your wallet still in your pocket, untouched."

— Gibson, William (b. 1948)

Date: 1992

"Even more important to David than the very natural worry that his wife and his son might grow fond of one another was the intoxicating feeling that he had a blank consciousness to work with, and it gave him great pleasure to knead this yielding clay with his artistic thumbs."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)