Date: 1998

"hese days he seemed to lack the dedication and clarity or emptiness of mind, and the action itself seemed quaintly outmoded and improbable, like lighting a fire by rubbing two sticks."

— McEwan, Ian (b. 1948)

Date: 1998

"But belligerence was a poor aid to concentration, as were the three gins and a bottle of wine, and three hours later he was still staring a the score on the piano, in a hunched attitude of work, with a pencil in his hand and a frown, but hearing and seeing only the bright hurdy-gurdy carousel of...

— McEwan, Ian (b. 1948)

Date: 1998

"But the static in your mind leaves you hollow and unkind / With a shock electric wave turns you on."

— Hansen, Beck [Beck] (b. July 8, 1970)

Date: 1999

"I love my brother dearly, but his mind is like a sieve."

— Budnitz, Judy (b. 1973)

Date: 1999

"On its own this trigger, as we can see from the earlier definition, is not going to generate consciousness. Imagine a candyfloss machine with a stick in the centre that then gathers more and more candyfloss as time goes on. Think of the epicentre as the stick in the centre, the burgeoning candy...

— Greenfield, Susan (b. 1950)

Date: 1999

"Another rather simplistic analogy might be a boss, at the centre of a big organization that is eventually going to recruit managers and submanagers. What in the brain could be the equivalent of the boss? The most obvious candidate, and one that might immediately spring to mind, is the basic comp...

— Greenfield, Susan (b. 1950)

Date: 1999

"But fiction is not empirical truth. It is simulation that runs on minds of readers just as computer simulations run on computers."

— Oatley, Keith

Date: 1999

"'How do you expect to learn anything when you fill your mind with garbage?' he said."

— Offill, Jenny (b. 1968)

Date: 1999

"A soul was like a worm in an apple, my mother told me."

— Offill, Jenny (b. 1968)

Date: 2000

"It's the death of your memory I still / cannot fathom: never in such small space / such wealth."

— Sagaser, Elizabeth Harris