Date: 1957

"'Really, your mind--' ... 'Like a sink, my nephew Raymond used to say,' Miss Marple agreed, nodding her head briskly. 'But I always told him, sinks are necesary domestic equipment and actually very hygienic.'"

— Christie, Agatha (1890-1976)

Date: 1959

"The heart's tough shell is still to crack / When, spent of all its wine and bread, / Unwinkingly the altar lies / Wreathed in its sour breath, cold and dead, / A server has put out its eyes."

— Hill, Geoffrey (b. 1932)

Date: 1984

"That whole private mythology, in which I believe totally, is a collaboration between one's conscious mind and those obsessions that, one by one, present themselves as stepping-stones."

— Ballard, J. G. (1930-2009)

Date: 1984

"I suppose people--certainly imaginative writers--who consciously exploit their own obsessions do so in part because those obsessions lie like stepping-stones in front of them, and their feet are drawn towards them."

— Ballard, J. G. (1930-2009)

Date: 1984

"Imagination is the shortest route between any two conceivable points, and more than equal to any physical rearrangement of the brain's functions."

— Ballard, J. G. (1930-2009)

Date: November 22, 1990

"One is not an immaterial soul, floating around in a machine."

— Sacks, Oliver (b. 1933)

Date: 1992

"Even more important to David than the very natural worry that his wife and his son might grow fond of one another was the intoxicating feeling that he had a blank consciousness to work with, and it gave him great pleasure to knead this yielding clay with his artistic thumbs."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 1992

"After a while, he no longer recognized what he was thinking and, just as a shop window sometimes prevents the onlooker from seeing the objects behind the glass and folds him instead in a narcissistic embrace, his mind ignored the flow of impressions from the outside world and locked him into a d...

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 1992

"But his mind was eclipsed by the shadow of his father's presence."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 1992

"Tightening his fists and concentrating until his concentration was like a telephone wire stretched between them, Patrick disappeared into the lizard's body."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)