Date: 1981

"If one must use metaphorical language, then let the metaphor be this: the mind and the world jointly make up the mind and the world. (Or, to make the metaphor even more Hegelian, the Universe makes up the Universe--with minds--collectively--playing a special role in the making up.)"

— Putnam, Hilary (b. 1926)

Date: 1984

"His brain was deep-fried. No, he decided, it had been thrown into hot fat and left there, and the fat had cooled, a thick dull grease congealing on wrinkled lobes, shot through with greenish-purple flashes of pain."

— Gibson, William (b. 1948)

Date: 1984

"He still had his anger. That was like being rolled in some alley and waking to discover your wallet still in your pocket, untouched."

— Gibson, William (b. 1948)

Date: 1985

"If the soul is just the story that it tells, then / Did his answer, his smile, / The way he took his comb out of his back pocket / And slicked his hair back, / Spite the soul with something like the soul?"

— Levis, Larry Patrick (1946-1996)

Date: 1985

"The Self sounds like a guy raking leaves / Off his walk. It sounds like the scrape of the rake. / The soul is just a story the scraping tells."

— Levis, Larry Patrick (1946-1996)

Date: 1990

"The soul is a corruption / and a mnemonic."

— Lee, Li-Young (b .1957)

Date: 1990

"I thought the soul an airy thing."

— Lee, Li-Young (b .1957)

Date: 1990

"I did not know the soul / is cleaved so that the soul might be restored. / Live wood hewn, / its sap springs from a sticky wound."

— Lee, Li-Young (b .1957)

Date: 1991

"You soar off to another world, deep in your mind, / But people seem to take that, as being unkind."

— Tribe Called Quest [Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Jarobi White]

Date: 1993

"Your mind, I tell graduates, is a lot like a parachute--it won't help you much if it doesn't open when you need it."

— Crowe, William J. (1925-2007)