Date: 1887

"Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic."

— Doyle, Arthur Conan (1859-1930)

Date: 1887

"It is a mistake to think that that little room [the 'brain-attic'] has elastic walls and can distend to any extent"

— Doyle, Arthur Conan (1859-1930)

Date: 1949-1952, 1953

"Hard, hard work, excavating and digging, mining, moling through tunnels, heaving, pushing, moving rock, working, working, working, working, working, panting, hauling, hoisting. And none of this work is seen from the outside. It's internally done. It happens because you are powerless and unable t...

— Bellow, Saul (1915-2005)

Date: April 1955

"The something gloom Of my soul's deep and dreary catacomb."

— Huxley, Aldous (1894-1963)

Date: April 1955

"'The something gloom,' she declaimed triumphantly, 'Of my soul's irremediable tomb.'"

— Huxley, Aldous (1894-1963)

Date: 1962

"And let me add here how much I was honored a fortnight later to meet in Washington that limp-looking, absent-minded, shabbily dressed splendid American gentleman whose mind was a library and not a debating hall."

— Nabokov, Vladimir (1899-1977)

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

"Whenever she thought of what she was meant to say, it seemed to dash around the corner, and lose itself in the crowd of things she should not say. The most successful fugitives were often the dullest, the sentences that nobody notices until they are not spoken: 'How nice to see you...won't you s...

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 1992

"The rotten floorboards of his thoughts gave way one after another until the ground itself seemed no fitter than sodden paper to catch his fall."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 1997

"What caretaker, what Verger of the Temple of the Self...?"

— Pynchon, Thomas (b. 1937)