Date: 1914

"I think with all his purity Emerson had within him the turbid stream of passion and desire; for all his hard-cut granite features he knew the instincts of the weakling and the slave; and for all his sweetness, he had the tiger and the jackal in his soul."

— de Cleyre, Voltairine (1866-1912)

Date: 1970

"Words came without volition, sinking very slowly through his mind like pebbles."

— Murdoch, Iris (191-1999)

Date: 2008

"There is tremendous precision and gentleness in the practice: the precision of noticing what is happending, the waterfall of thought; the gentleness of being nonjudgmental, not rejecting the busy mind. Over time, acknowledging that we are thinking and coming back to breath, the waterfall gradual...

— Barker, Phil

Date: 2008

"When people begin to practise mindfulness they are usually surprised to discover how busy the mind is: like a waterfall, one thought tumbling after the next."

— Barker, Phil

Date: May 18, 2015

"'I have to be totally still.' Ideas come floating up 'like a bubble in liquid.' At that point, he goes into an excitable motor state, pacing or scribbling down ideas."

— Colapinto, John (b. 1958)

Date: July 27, 2016

"But, gradually, I found myself caught up in the flow of the thing, gliding in my mind around every bend in the river, riding a raft with someone who knows where all the snags and sunken rocks of public life are."

— Pierce, Charles P. (b. 1953)

Date: August 20, 2017

""Twin Peaks: The Return" works much differently, in that we occasionally get scenes or even entire hours that draw us far away from the straight, well-defined narrative path ... until we're floating around, dangerously unmoored, in David Lynch's subconscious."

— Murray, Noel

Date: June 16, 2018

"Throughout that summer and into the fall, floating in a pool of cheap beer, just below the surface of my semiconsciousness, was the constant thought: Maybe I won't wake up this time."

— Powers, Kevin (b. 1980)

Date: February 21, 2019

"It was a place where she knew what was going to happen, a place where she would always choose the right side, where the failure was in history and not in herself, where she did not read the wrong writers, was not seized with surges of enthusiasm for the wrong leaders, did not eat the wrong anima...

— Lockwood, Patricia

Date: 2019

"When I try to drown my thoughts in gin / I find my worst ideas know how to swim."

— Berman, David (1967-2019)