Date: 1799

"I was driven, by a sort of mechanical impulse, in his foot-steps."

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Date: 1984

"Case felt as though his brain were jammed."

— Gibson, William (b. 1948)

Date: 1984

"Sandstorms raged across the scoured floor of his skull, generating waves of high thin static that broke behind his eyes, spheres of purest crystal, expanding."

— Gibson, William (b. 1948)

Date: 1985

"In the dark the mind runs on like a devouring machine, the only thing awake in the universe."

— Delillo, Don (b. 1936)

Date: June 19, 2000

"The record she'd given me was playing in my mind, and I kept trying to shut it off."

— Packer, ZZ (b. 1973)

Date: 2006

"The neurologist made the brain sound more rickety than the old toy trucks Mark used to assemble from discarded cabinet parts and sawn-off detergent bottles."

— Powers, Richard (b. 1957)

Date: 2006

"'What we think of as a single, simple process,' Weber wrote, 'is in fact a long assembly line. Vision requires careful coordination between thirty-two or more separate brain modules. Recognizing a face takes at least two dozen.'"

— Powers, Richard (b. 1957)

Date: 2006

"We are hard-wired for finding faces."

— Powers, Richard (b. 1957)

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: 2006

"He knew the drill: throughout history, the brain had been compared to the highest prevailing level of technology: steam engine, telephone switchboard, computer."

— Powers, Richard (b. 1957)