We've been foodies as long as we've been farmers

Constant harvesting of the grain encouraged the plants to grow larger and more abundantly, so maize quickly became plentiful - farmers generally got a healthy return on their invested labour. Crucially, maize is a rich carbohydrate that gives you a rapid energy hit. Unfortunately, it is also pretty stodgy, and so from very early on farmers cultivated an ingenious accompaniment - the indigenous chilli. It has limited nutritional value, but it is uniquely able to liven up dull carbohydrates - and its development and widespread use across Central America is a resounding demonstration that we've been foodies as long as we've been farmers.

N. MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 objects (2010), 47 [9: Maya maize god statue]

A cancerous growth of fancy word-tissue

I detest Punningans Wake in which a cancerous growth of fancy word-tissue hardly redeems the dreadful joviality of the folklore and the easy, too easy, allegory

V. Nabokov, quoted in H. Gold, 'Vladimir Nabokov, The Art of Fiction No. 40', The Paris Review 41 (1967). <http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4310/the-art-of-fiction-no-40-vladimir-nabokov> Retrieved 27.3.14

The existence of Simla was itself a comment on the astonishing complacency of the British in India

The existence of Simla was itself a comment on the astonishing complacency of the British in India at this period: for seven months of the year, the Company ruled one-fifth of mankind from a Himalayan village overlooking the borders of Tibet and connected to the outside world by a road little better than a goat path. 

W. Dalrymple, Return of a King (2013), 130

There is a boy across the river with a bottom like a peach

There is a boy across the river with a bottom like a peach
But alas! I cannot swim

Khushal Khan, quoted in W. Dalrymple, Return of a King (2013), 17
Though the endnotes sadly tell us that 'many scholars doubt the authenticity of this celebrated couplet'