Date: 1820
"And we breathe, and sicken not, / The atmosphere of human thought: / Be it dim, and dank, and gray, / Like a storm-extinguished day, / Travelled o'er by dying gleams; / Be it bright as all between / Cloudless skies and windless streams, / Silent, liquid, and serene; / As the birds within the win...
preview | full record— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)
Date: January, 1884
"Our mental life, like a bird's life, seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings."
preview | full record— James, William (1842-1910)
Date: 1992
"It was hard enough to rescue himself from the avalanche of his own feelings, without allowing the gloomy St Bernard of his attention to wander into other fields."
preview | full record— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)
Date: 2006
"Weber still saw the rarest of butterflies, fluttering mind, its paired wings pinned to the film in obscene detail."
preview | full record— Powers, Richard (b. 1957)
Date: 2009, trans. 2012
"As all the thoughts and images of consciousness began to move in directions over which I had no control, and I seemed to be lying there watching them, like a kind of lazy sheepdog of the mind, I knew sleep was around the corner."
preview | full record— Knausgaard, Karl Ove (b. 1968)
Date: May 21, 2011
"My thoughts turn into the cowbirds wandering among the horses’ hooves."
preview | full record— Klinkenbourg, Verlyn (b. 1952)
Date: June 30, 2017
"Research explains why forgetting delivers this memory boost. Memories don't fly out of our brains like sparrows from a barn."
preview | full record— Boser, Ulrich
Date: May 4, 2018
"But if I can identify the lizard of envy crawling around in my psyche, I can usually tamp down the ire."
preview | full record— Marino, Gordon