Date: 2001

"I walked around this place, said Austerlitz, his left hand pointing to the tall brick façade of the hospital building towering behind the wall, in the curiously remote state of mind induced by the drugs I was being given; both desolate and weirdly contented I wandered, all through that winter, u...

— Sebald, W. G. (1944-2001)

Date: 2001

"Wind, ocean, fire: the things we like to liken our passions to don't break, can't stop."

— Richardson, James (b. 1950)

Date: 2006

"That he could enkindle in the heart of the child what was ashes in his own."

— McCarthy, Cormac (b. 1933)

Date: 2006

"You wave your torch into my eyes / Flamethrower lover burning mind."

— Sonic Youth [Kim A Gordon, Thurston Joseph Moore, Lee M Ranaldo, Steven Shelley]

Date: 2006

"You doused my soul with gasoline / You flicked a match into my brain."

— Sonic Youth [Kim A Gordon, Thurston Joseph Moore, Lee M Ranaldo, Steven Shelley]

Date: 2009, trans. 2012

"But with the flame of alcohol burning in my brain I took no notice of the atmosphere that otherwise would have affected me, for although I wasn't outright happy, I was elated, exhilarated, motivated by the desire to continue this, which not even a direct reminder of Dad's death could shake, it w...

— Knausgaard, Karl Ove (b. 1968)

Date: February 1, 2010

"Burn the body down / And, with it, out goes the pilot / Blue light of the mind."

— Cruz, Cynthia

Date: 2010

"Brain on fire, I then leadfooted it at once back to my mother's house."

— Castle, Terry (b. 1953)

Date: 2010

"Yet seared into my brain forever is one of her parting utterances: a cool assessment--delivered with ghoulish panache as she and my friend were about to leave--of the Professor in the sack."

— Castle, Terry (b. 1953)

Date: April 24, 2011

"God seeks a destiny in all things fired / in the kiln of the sun or the mind."

— Lee, Li-Young (b .1957)