Date: March/April 2011

"He poured himself a brandy and lit a cigar, and tried to concentrate on other things--his many victories, the bravery of his men--but his thoughts swirled in tiny eddies, settling first here, then there, moving as the wind does from empty town to empty town."

— Strand, Mark (b. 1934)

Date: Winter 2011

"I'm doing a reading that night and so is Jean but in different places and I don't know how to reach her or Andrew or the vague choir of boys swimming in my mind or why I even need to reach the vague choir (except for another fix of beauty)."

— Klein, Michael

Date: September 2, 2011

"When we fight an urge, it feels like a strenuous effort, as if there were a homunculus in the head that physically impinged on a persistent antagonist."

— Pinker, Steven (b. 1954)

Date: September 2, 2011

"We speak of exerting will power, of forcing ourselves to go to work, of restraining ourselves and of controlling our temper, as if it were an unruly dog."

— Pinker, Steven (b. 1954)

Date: September 2, 2011

"The 'will' in willpower is not some mysterious 'free will,' a ghost in the machine that can do as it pleases, but a part of the machine itself."

— Pinker, Steven (b. 1954)

Date: September 2, 2011

"The disasters reveal a limitation of the muscle metaphor: certain evolutionarily prepared drives seem to withstand even the most bulked-up powers of will."

— Pinker, Steven (b. 1954)

Date: April 25, 2011

"If Eagleman's body bears no marks of his childhood accident, his mind has been deeply imprinted by it."

— Bilger, Burkhard

Date: April 25, 2011

"The brain is a remarkably capable chronometer for most purposes."

— Bilger, Burkhard

Date: April 25, 2011

"Like a racing engine, her mental clock went faster the hotter it got."

— Bilger, Burkhard

Date: April 25, 2011

"The most recent neuroscience papers make the brain sound like a Victorian attic, full of odd, vaguely labelled objects ticking away in every corner."

— Bilger, Burkhard