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Date: April 8, 1950

"Then, abruptly, familiarly, and, as usual, with no warning, he thought he felt his mind dislodge itself and teeter, like insecure luggage on an overhead rack."

— Salinger, J.D. (1919-2010)

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Date: 1951

"And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind."

— Bradbury, Ray (1920-2012)

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Date: 1963

"What I didn't say was that each time I picked up a German dictionary or a German book, the very sight of those dense, black, barbed-wire letters made my mind shut like a clam."

— Plath, Sylvia (1932-1963)

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Date: 1963

"Then he started talking about let a equal acceleration and let t equal time and suddenly he was scribbling letters and numbers and equals signs all over the blackboard and my mind went dead."

— Plath, Sylvia (1932-1963)

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Date: 1963

"At about this point I began to feel peculiar. I looked round me at all the rows of rapt little heads with the same silver glow on them at the front and the same black shadow on them at the back, and they looked like nothing more or less than a lot of stupid moonbrains."

— Plath, Sylvia (1932-1963)

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Date: 1963

"After that--in spite of the Girl Scouts and the piano lessons and the water-color lessons and the dancing lessons and the sailing camp, all of which my mother scrimped to give me, and college, with crewing in the mist before breakfast and blackbottom pies and the little new firecrackers of ideas...

— Plath, Sylvia (1932-1963)

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Date: 1963

"The thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower."

— Plath, Sylvia (1932-1963)

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Date: 1963

"Words dimly familiar but twisted all awry, like faces in a funhouse mirror, fled past, leaving no impression on the glassy surface of my brain."

— Plath, Sylvia (1932-1963)

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Date: 1963

"Every time I tried to concentrate, my mind glided off, like a skater, into a large empty space, and piroutted there, absently."

— Plath, Sylvia (1932-1963)

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Date: 1963

"I stored the fact that there were real glasses in the corner of my mind the way a squirrel stores a nut."

— Plath, Sylvia (1932-1963)

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The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.