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: 1938

Travel may "put a stopper on those memories you would like to resurrect. It does not always work, of course, sometimes the scent is too strong for the bottle, and too strong for me. And then the devil in one, like a furtive peeping Tom, tries to draw the cork."

— Du Maurier, Daphne, Lady Browning (1907-1989)

Date: 1938

"'If only there could be an invention,' I said impulsively, 'that bottled up a memory, like a scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.'"

— Du Maurier, Daphne, Lady Browning (1907-1989)

Date: 1975

"In the preceding months he had prepared himself with meticulous care, filling his mind with distilled knowledge, drop by drop, until, on the eve of the first paper (Old English Set Texts) it was almost brimming over."

— Lodge, David (b. 1935)

Date: 1975

"Each morning for the next ten days he bore his precious vessel to the examination halls and poured a measured quantity of the contents on to the pages of ruled quarto. Day by day the level fell, until on the tenth day the vessel was empty, the cup was drained, the cupboard was bare"

— Lodge, David (b. 1935)

Date: 1975

"In the years that followed he set about replenishing his mind, but it was never quite the same. The sense of purpose was lacking--there was no great Reckoning against which he could hoard his knowledge, so that it tended to leak away as fast as he acquired it."

— Lodge, David (b. 1935)

Date: 1997

"But her innocent attention has reach'd unto the dead Vacuum ever at the bottom of my soul,-- humiliation absolute."

— Pynchon, Thomas (b. 1937)

Date: 1999

"'How do you expect to learn anything when you fill your mind with garbage?' he said."

— Offill, Jenny (b. 1968)

Date: 2006

"More and more in recent weeks, he had found himself approaching likewise the condition of an empty cylinder, ony intermittently occupied by intelligent thought."

— Pynchon, Thomas (b. 1937)

Date: 2009

"His brain gradually empties of work, of falafel wraps and oaty squares, and he starts to feel hopeful for the evening; perhaps he'll acquire that state of peaceful inactivity that is the nirvana of the exhausted parent."

— Nicholls, David (b. 1966)