Date: 1860

"What you call self-conquest -- blinding and deafening yourself to all but one train of impressions, is only the culture of monomania in a nature like yours."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1860

"Yes! I have had feelings to struggle with - but I conquered them."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1922

"Tonight deftly amid wild drink and talk, to pierce the polished mail of his mind."

— Joyce, James (1882-1941)

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: 1992

"No doubt suicide would turn out to be the violent preface to yet another span of nauseating consciousness, of diminishing spirals and tightening nooses, and memories like shrapnel tearing all day long through his flesh."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 2000

"This is after all the heart of the matter, the place where everything -- not without difficulty, not without civil war, not without nailing down my tongue and drawing over it the serrated knife of one thing after another, not without learning to thank my torturers because it's been such a growth...

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: July 23, 2012

"I'm O.K., you tell them, but with each passing week the depression deepens. You try to describe it. Like someone flew a plane into your soul. Like someone flew two planes into your soul."

— Díaz, Junot (b. 1968)