Date: March 17, 1950 [2005]

"One of those involuntary revealing thoughts one surprises, running like a rat through the muck-heap of my mind: Maybe I'll be able to afford that ikon if he goes."

— Friend, Donald (1915-1989)

Date: April 8, 1950

"Then, abruptly, familiarly, and, as usual, with no warning, he thought he felt his mind dislodge itself and teeter, like insecure luggage on an overhead rack."

— Salinger, J.D. (1919-2010)

Date: 1952

La structure néurotique d'un individu sear justement l'élaboration, la formation, l'éclosion dans le moi de noeuds conflictuels provenant d'une part du milieu, d'autre part de la façon toute personelle dont cet individu réagit à ces influences [The neurotic structure of an individual is precisely...

— Fanon, Frantz (1925-1961)

Date: 1949-1952, 1953

"Hard, hard work, excavating and digging, mining, moling through tunnels, heaving, pushing, moving rock, working, working, working, working, working, panting, hauling, hoisting. And none of this work is seen from the outside. It's internally done. It happens because you are powerless and unable t...

— Bellow, Saul (1915-2005)

Date: 1953

"Should poets bicycle-pump the human heart / Or squash it flat?"

— Amis, Kingsley (1922-1995)

Date: December, 1954

"Does Somebody look bored, / His thoughts vacant as plaster, with being year / After bleeding year, our immobile word?"

— Scott, Peter Dale (b. January 11, 1929)

Date: 1955

"The courtyards of the inner heart go round / And round, so sure are they / Where they will end; the brick / Convolutions enter and extend / The individual life, and come to end."

— Miles, Josephine (1911-1985)

Date: 1957

"'Really, your mind--' ... 'Like a sink, my nephew Raymond used to say,' Miss Marple agreed, nodding her head briskly. 'But I always told him, sinks are necesary domestic equipment and actually very hygienic.'"

— Christie, Agatha (1890-1976)

Date: Jan. 9, 1958

"This in haste to get something off my muckheap of a mind."

— Beckett, Samuel (1096-1989)

Date: 1955, 1958

"It [the title of this book] is used out of context but expresses the way I felt about these poems when I wrote them---as if they were, taken together, a kind of Coney Island of the mind, a kind of circus of the soul."

— Ferlinghetti, Lawrence. (b. 1919)