Date: 2011

"I could share an hour of warm camaraderie with Dad, then once I'd walked out the door, get the uncanny feeling I'd disappeared into the wings of his mind's stage, like a character no longer necessary to the ongoing story line."

— Reagan, Ron (b. 1958)

Date: March 10, 2011

"Richards’s sharpness is surprising coming from a guy whose mind, everyone had to assume, was by now a salvage heap."

— Chiasson, Dan

Date: March 24, 2011

"It is like finding that cheese depends on chalk--that soul depends on matter."

— McGinn, Colin (b. 1950)

Date: March 24, 2011

"It [neurology] has all the fascination of a horror story--the Jekyll of the mind bound for life to the Hyde of the brain."

— McGinn, Colin (b. 1950)

Date: March 11, 2011

"Given the limits of steel and concrete to resist the forces of nature, much depends on people’s own preparedness to face up to disaster -- but that mental infrastructure is in even poorer shape than the nation’s roads and bridges."

— Schwartz, John

Date: March 19, 2011

"A chalkboard is a lot like memory: often jumbled, unorganized and sloppy. Even after it's erased, there are traces of everything that's been written on it."

— Anonymous

Date: April 18, 2011

"And so it goes, researchers say, with most study sessions: difficulty builds mental muscle, while ease often builds only confidence."

— Carey, Benedict (b. 1960)

Date: May 23, 2011

"Learning isn’t about downloading a certain quantity of information into your brain, as the proponents of online instruction seem to think."

— Deresiewicz, William (b. 1964)

Date: May 21, 2011

"My thoughts turn into the cowbirds wandering among the horses’ hooves."

— Klinkenbourg, Verlyn (b. 1952)

Date: June 4, 2011

"My desk faces a wall covered with images, notes, timelines, vaudeville photographs and playbills; my keyboard sits in a small black space surrounded by piles of books and paper -- the brain disgorged and arrayed."

— Endicott, Marina (b. 1958)