Date: April 18, 2011

"And so it goes, researchers say, with most study sessions: difficulty builds mental muscle, while ease often builds only confidence."

— Carey, Benedict (b. 1960)

Date: May 23, 2011

"Learning isn’t about downloading a certain quantity of information into your brain, as the proponents of online instruction seem to think."

— Deresiewicz, William (b. 1964)

Date: May 21, 2011

"My thoughts turn into the cowbirds wandering among the horses’ hooves."

— Klinkenbourg, Verlyn (b. 1952)

Date: Winter 2011

"I'm doing a reading that night and so is Jean but in different places and I don't know how to reach her or Andrew or the vague choir of boys swimming in my mind or why I even need to reach the vague choir (except for another fix of beauty)."

— Klein, Michael

Date: September 2, 2011

"When we fight an urge, it feels like a strenuous effort, as if there were a homunculus in the head that physically impinged on a persistent antagonist."

— Pinker, Steven (b. 1954)

Date: September 2, 2011

"We speak of exerting will power, of forcing ourselves to go to work, of restraining ourselves and of controlling our temper, as if it were an unruly dog."

— Pinker, Steven (b. 1954)

Date: September 2, 2011

"The 'will' in willpower is not some mysterious 'free will,' a ghost in the machine that can do as it pleases, but a part of the machine itself."

— Pinker, Steven (b. 1954)

Date: September 2, 2011

"The disasters reveal a limitation of the muscle metaphor: certain evolutionarily prepared drives seem to withstand even the most bulked-up powers of will."

— Pinker, Steven (b. 1954)

Date: April 25, 2011

"If Eagleman's body bears no marks of his childhood accident, his mind has been deeply imprinted by it."

— Bilger, Burkhard

Date: April 25, 2011

"The brain is a remarkably capable chronometer for most purposes."

— Bilger, Burkhard