Date: April 18, 2011

"And so it goes, researchers say, with most study sessions: difficulty builds mental muscle, while ease often builds only confidence."

— Carey, Benedict (b. 1960)

Date: June 4, 2011

"My desk faces a wall covered with images, notes, timelines, vaudeville photographs and playbills; my keyboard sits in a small black space surrounded by piles of books and paper -- the brain disgorged and arrayed."

— Endicott, Marina (b. 1958)

Date: June 14, 2011

"But they usually assume that the purpose of reasoning is to help an individual arrive at the truth, and that irrationality is a kink in that process, a sort of mental myopia."

— Cohen, Patricia

Date: September 2, 2011

"The disasters reveal a limitation of the muscle metaphor: certain evolutionarily prepared drives seem to withstand even the most bulked-up powers of will."

— Pinker, Steven (b. 1954)

Date: 2011

"There will be such an awful beauty in your heart. A wound like a seal upon it."

— Nadzam, Bonnie

Date: March 17, 2012

"It forces the brain to resolve internal conflict, giving the mind a workout that strengthens its cognitive muscles."

— Bhattacharjee, Yudhijit

Date: May 7, 2012

"The fear gets released later on, while I'm falling asleep and near-misses replay themselves in my mind's eye like an endless computer game fraught with constant hazards, in which I'm a disembodied Steadicam hurtling through busy city streets at the same speed something falls, pedestrians appeari...

— Kreider, Tim (b. 1967)

Date: August 2012

"My father tried turning his thoughts into a substitute immune system."

— Roth, Marco (b. 1974)

Date: April 12, 2013

"All of which goes to show that the real 'eye' of the beholder is the brain itself."

— Kandel, Eric R. (b. 1929)

Date: May 12, 2014

"Now a growing stream of research suggests that strengthening this mental muscle, usually with exercises in so-called mindfulness, may help children and adults cope with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and its adult equivalent, attention deficit disorder."

— Goleman, Daniel (b. 1946)