Date: October 10, 2016

"Patrick Collison, the C.E.O. of the electronic-payments company Stripe, likened Altman's brain to the claw machine on a carnival midway: 'It roams around but has the ability to plunge very deep when necessary.'"

— Friend, Tad (b. 1962)

Date: September 18, 2016

"Deep in the night, those warnings scuttle around my mind like rats."

— Kennedy, Pagan (b. 1963)

Date: September 18, 2016

"In the red glare of the digital clock, my brain rattled its cage."

— Kennedy, Pagan (b. 1963)

Date: September 18, 2016

"Mr. Ackerman told me that he has designed his 'Sleep With Me' podcast to tame the vigilant, overactive 'guardian' in the brain that feels it must stay awake to worry. 'I'm trying to trick the guardian,' he said."

— Kennedy, Pagan (b. 1963)

Date: September 18, 2016

"In the bunk bed of your mind, he's the compassionate brother lying a few feet above you, a voice in the darkness promising he'll talk until you drift off."

— Kennedy, Pagan (b. 1963)

Date: September 18, 2016

"In the dark hours, when we're wandering in the wilderness of thought, sometimes we just need to feel that someone, even a digital someone with a prerecorded voice, is watching over us."

— Kennedy, Pagan (b. 1963)

Date: December 12, 2016

"The mind too, whirling, vectoring, reaching short but at least / reaching, rising, consigning--towards and towards."

— Graham, Jorie (b. 1950)

Date: December 12, 2016

" And perhaps he speaks / of the nature of light, or the coils in my mind"

— De la O, Marsha

Date: December 12, 2016

"tell me, Bird, how soul inhabits the place of fire, / how soul dwells there in its trembling?"

— De la O, Marsha

Date: December 29, 2016

"Hardly a week goes by, it seems, without an enthusiastic report in the popular media about intriguing neuroscience research linking some human behavior to the function of a particular brain circuit."

— Friedman, Richard A.