Given the choice, many animals will opt for cooked food over raw

Given the choice, many animals will opt for cooked food over raw. This shouldn't surprise us: "coked food is better than raw," Wragham says, "because life is mostly concerned with energy" - and cooked food yields more energy. 

...

Ninety percent of a cooked egg is digested,whereas only 65 percent of a raw egg is; by the same token, the rarer the steak, or the more al dente the pasta, the less of it will be absorbed. Dieters take note.

M. Pollan, Cooked (2013), 61 (and footnote)

I blame the radio for sowing a good deal of confusion where theology is concerned

Two or three of the ladies had pronounced views on points of doctrine, particularly sin and damnation. I blame the radio for sowing a good deal of confusion where theology is concerned. And television is worse. you can spend forty years teaching people to be awake to the fact of mystery and then some fellow with no more theological sense than a jackrabbit gets himself a radio ministry and all your work is forgotten.

M. Robinson, Gilead (2004), 237

In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets

I know this is all mere apparition compared to what awaits us, but it is only lovelier for that. There is a human beauty in it. And I can't believe that, when we have all been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us. In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. Because I don't imagine any reality putting this one to shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try.  

M. Robinson, Gilead (2004), 65

Feuerbach is a famous atheist, but he is about as good on the joyful aspects of religion as anybody

Feuerbach is a famous atheist, but he is about as good on the joyful aspects of religion as anybody, and he loves the world. Of course he thinks religion could just stand out of the way and let joy exist pure and undisguised. That is his one error, and it is significant. But he is marvelous on the subject of joy, an also on its religious expressions.

Broughton takes a very dim view of him, because he unsettled the faith of so many people, but I take issue as much with those people as with Feuerbach. It seems to me people just go around looking to get their faith unsettled.

M. Robinson, Gilead (2004), 27

The greatest volume of any single product traded internationally in western Europe during the medieval period.

In the period 1305-36, when the city [Bordeaux] was prosperous under English occupation, it is estimated that wine exports from Gascony to England and Flanders reached 750,000 hectolitres a year. This represents the greatest volume of any single product traded internationally in western Europe during the medieval period.

B. Cunliffe, Facing the Ocean (2001), 51

Hernando Cortez cannot be true

I wrote my Mexico book out of incredulity. Hernando Cortez cannot be true. There cannot have been a human being so brave, charismatic, obstinate and apparently indestructible. How could anyone be so greedy, fanatical, and unimaginative as to lead a few hundred men into an alien continent of whose topography he was ignorant, swarming with a race devoted to the slaughter and sacrifice of strangers, in order to take prisoner their their leader in his own capital city? And succeed. And then, when the tables are turned and he is driven out, set to and build thirteen vessels of war and carry them back one hundred and forty miles across mountains because the only way you can tackle a city sited in the middle of a lake is with superior shipping.And succeed again. Is a man who is impelled to do such things a hero or a maniac?

P.Lively, Moon tiger (1987)

War has been much misrepresented, believe me. It's had a disgracefully good press.

'Are we going to win the war?' asks Claudia.

'Yes. I assume so. Not because of the lord's intervention or because justice will prevail but because in the last resort we have greater resources. Wars have little to do with justice.Or valour or sacrifice or the other things traditionally associated with them. That's one thing I hadn't quite realised. War has been much misrepresented, believe me. It's had a disgracefully good press. I hope you and your friends are doing something to put that right.' 

P. Lively, Moon Tiger (1987), 102-3