Date: 1791, 1794

"I mean not to extenuate the faults of those unhappy women who fall victims to guilt and folly; but surely, when we reflect how many errors we are ourselves subject to, how many secret faults lie hid in the recesses of our hearts, which we should blush to have brought into open day (and yet those...

— Rowson, Susanna (1762-1828)

Date: 1892

"The broadest land that grows / Is not so ample as the breast / These emerald seams enclose."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: April 15, 1971

"You've got a geranium in your cranium."

— Lederer, Esther [Ann Landers] (1918-2002)

Date: 1999

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

— Offill, Jenny (b. 1968)

Date: 2006

"Curses, outbursts / and distracting chants simmer all day / long in the Crock-Pots of our heads."

— Gerstler, Amy (b. 1956)

Date: 2010

"The idea of sex with a woman, of 'having a lesbian lover,' was simply unthinkable, like living alone at the North Pole or deciding to become a lycanthrope. If the thought existed at all, it was a mote, a sweet nothing--a little 'feather on the breath of God,' barely sensed now and then, but most...

— Castle, Terry (b. 1953)

Date: 2011

"And the wind will be dirty in his hair, and there will be no decent place left in his heart because in all this chasing nothing he will have scrubbed it out, scrubbed it hollow, and nothing can fill it back up but words he makes as beautiful as he can."

— Nadzam, Bonnie

Date: 2011

"Clean out my heart, you know? It's like a crowded old garage. It needs emptying and sorting."

— Nadzam, Bonnie

Date: 2014

"If this were a domestic tragedy, and it might well be, this would be your fatal flaw--your memory, vessel of your feelings."

— Rankine, Claudia (b. 1963)

Date: 2014

"To your mind, feelings are what create a person, something unwilling, something wild vandalizing whatever the skull holds."

— Rankine, Claudia (b. 1963)