Date: 1947, 1958

"Religion, ethics, metaphysics – these are merely the 'spiritual' and 'inner' festivals of human anguish, ways of channelling the black waters of anxiety – and towards what abyss?"

— Lefebvre, Henri (1901-1991)

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: 1979

" But they can be sent along the usual channels […] until at some critical point, a "mental faucet" is closed, preventing them from actually being carried out."

— Hofstadter, Douglas (b. 1945)

Date: 1992

"After a while, he no longer recognized what he was thinking and, just as a shop window sometimes prevents the onlooker from seeing the objects behind the glass and folds him instead in a narcissistic embrace, his mind ignored the flow of impressions from the outside world and locked him into a d...

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 1992

"Only behind a waterfall of brutal and pleasurable sensations, thought Patrick, accepting the leather-clad menu without bothering to glance up, could he hide from the bloodhounds of his conscience. . There, in the cool recess of the rock, behind that heavy white veil, he would hear them yelping a...

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 1992

"Or--he must stop thinking about it--or [his consciousness seemed] like a solution of saturated copper sulphate under the microscope, when it suddenly transforms and crystals break out everywhere on its surface."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 2000

"He hadn't yet organised his memories of the conference into anecdote and he knew that unless he gave them that structure they would slip down the nearest drain."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

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: March 29, 2010

"Drip, drip, drip — that’s what insomniac thoughts feel like, a leaky faucet behind the eyes."

— Marino, Gordon

Date: March 11, 2011

"The huge submerged bulk of the mental iceberg, with its stores of memory and acquired skills that have become automatic, like language, driving and etiquette, supplies people with the raw materials on which they can exercise their reason and decide what to think and what to do."

— Nagel, Thomas (b. 1937)