Date: 2006

"Curses, outbursts / and distracting chants simmer all day / long in the Crock-Pots of our heads."

— Gerstler, Amy (b. 1956)

Date: 2007

"Yeah, mind-bottling. You know, when things are so crazy it gets your thoughts all trapped, like in a bottle?"

— Cox, Jeff, Craig Cox, John Altschuler, and Dave Krinsky

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)

Date: August 3, 2009

"Then, when you wake up at 3 A.M. and you need big, sad, well-placed words to tumble slowly into the basin of your mind, and you don't want to wake up the person who's in bed with you, you can reach under the pillow and find Apple's smooth machine and click it on."

— Baker, Nicholson (b. 1957)

Date: April 2, 2009

"Memory is a muscle, not a quart jar."

— Holt, Jim

Date: 2010

"His cell was a concrete box six feet by ten with one window and a steel door with a slot wide enough to slip his hands through but that was all, and most of the time he just lay there on his cot, his mind so blank it was like a pail with nothing in it."

— Cronin, Justin

Date: 2010

"The idea of sex with a woman, of 'having a lesbian lover,' was simply unthinkable, like living alone at the North Pole or deciding to become a lycanthrope. If the thought existed at all, it was a mote, a sweet nothing--a little 'feather on the breath of God,' barely sensed now and then, but most...

— Castle, Terry (b. 1953)

Date: October 31, 2011

"And then there were the experiments, each one a snapshot into the dark box of the brain."

— Carey, Benedict (b. 1960)

Date: 2011

"And the wind will be dirty in his hair, and there will be no decent place left in his heart because in all this chasing nothing he will have scrubbed it out, scrubbed it hollow, and nothing can fill it back up but words he makes as beautiful as he can."

— Nadzam, Bonnie

Date: 2011

"Clean out my heart, you know? It's like a crowded old garage. It needs emptying and sorting."

— Nadzam, Bonnie