Date: 1999

"As the brain gets more complex in the womb, then, like a dimmer switch, consciousness gradually grows and burgeons until, of course, in adulthood it reaches its particular pinnacles or depths."

— Greenfield, Susan (b. 1950)

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

"Perhaps the consciousness of dreaming is the almost random formation of little groups forming in different configurations like pebbles thrown very gently into the water. One can imagine the gentle ripples easily being displaced by the next pebble as it hits the water."

— Greenfield, Susan (b. 1950)

Date: October 2, 2010

"[Thoughts] just come and go and change shape like the clouds."

— Levy, Andrea (b. 1956)

Date: July 11, 2014

"Roman streets were populated with Greek slaves; their temples with Greek gods; their minds with Greek ideas."

— Hughes, Bettany (b. 1967)

Date: July 11, 2014

"Did he feel his mind and morals were mildewed by the miasma of Nero's, and Rome's, mania?"

— Hughes, Bettany (b. 1967)

Date: March 19, 2015

"When students are tackling a task like that, you can feel the whirr and hum of thought: it feels woven of reciprocity, willing, ambition, the impulse to translate fugitive thoughts into communication with others."

— Warner, Marina (b. 1946)

Date: December 9, 2015

"But it comes with a troubling idea of what literature is today: a salve for the distracted mind; a groove along which thoughts disordered by the bad habits of centripetal reading might fall back into line."

— Lupton, Christina

Date: 2018

"As that word left a greasy trail through his skull, he saw her."

— Hermione Hoby