Date: March 1843

"It was the sad confession and continual exemplification of the shortcomings of the composite man, the spirit burdened with clay and working in matter, and of the despair that assails the higher nature at finding itself so miserably thwarted by the earthly part."

— Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1804-1864)

Date: 1850

"The characters of the narrative would not be warmed and rendered malleable by any heat that I could kindle at my intellectual forge."

— Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1804-1864)

Date: 1984

"The Kuang program spurted from tarnished cloud, Case's consciousness divided like beads of mercury, arcing above an endless beach the color of the dark silver clouds."

— Gibson, William (b. 1948)

Date: 1999

"The next day, I changed all my classmates’ names to numbers to better reflect their metal hearts."

— Offill, Jenny (b. 1968)

Date: 2006

"It was a time in Cripple and Victor, Leadville and Creede, when men were finding their way to the unblastable seams of their own secret natures, learning the true names of desire, which spoke, so they dreamed, would open the way through the mountains to all that had been denied them."

— Pynchon, Thomas (b. 1937)