The only product of the forces of evolution capable of understandingits own origins

He remembered a time at Bart's, holding a human brain in his hands for the first time, being amazed by the weight of it. This blown eggshell had contained the only product of the forces of evolution capable of understanding its own origins.

P. Barker, The ghost road (1995), 238

Cynical in the thorough-going way of those who have not so farencountered much to be cynical about

Potts  had been a science student at Manchester University, bright, articulate, cynical in the thorough-going way of those who have not so far encountered much to be cynical about. The war, he insisted loudly, flushed with wine, was feathering the nests of profiteers. It was being fought to safeguard access to the oil wells of Mesopotamia. It had nothing, absoluely nothing, to do with Belgian neutrality, the rights of small nations or anything like that. And if Hallet thought it had, then Hallet was a naive idiot. Hallet came from an old army family and had been well and expensively educated to think as little as possible; confronted by Potts, he floundered, but then quickly began to formulate beliefs he had hitherto believed everybody shared.

P. Barker, The ghost road (1995), 143

They eat nothing but offal cooked in rancid olive oil in Turkey

Bond sat down in a comfortable-armed chair and took the small tumbler the waiter offered him. He lifted it towards Kerim and tasted it. It [raki] was identical with ouzo. He drank it down. At once the waiter refilled his glass.

"And now to order your lunch. They eat nothing but offal cooked in rancid olive oil in Turkey. At least the offal in Misir Carsasi is the best."

I. Fleming, From Russia, with love (1957), 109

A great deal of killing has to be done in the USSR

A great deal of killing has to be done in the USSR, not because the average Russian is a cruel man, though some of their races are among the cruellest peoples in the world, but as an instrument of policy. People who act against the State are enemies of the State, and the State has no room for enemies. There is too much to do for precious time to be allocated to them, and, if they are a persistent nuisance, they get killed. In a country with a population of 200,000,000, you can kill many thousands a year without missing them. ... The problem is the shortage of executioners.

I. Fleming, From Russia, with love (1957), 23

The only discourtesies I have met with have been from Prussians

The only discourtesies I have met with have been from Prussians. The Bavarians I know have all been delightful, and as for the Tyrolese, I cannot say how much I like them. But the Prussuans see to be filled with a hatred as bitter and venomous as vitriol.

E.M. Brent-Dyer, The school at the chalet (1925), 95

The colour of old brown sherry

Madge Bettany was good to look at. She was slight to the verge of thinness, with a well-poised head covered by a mop of curly dark brown hair.  Her eyes were dark brown too - the colour of old brown sherry - and were shaded by long, upcurling, black lashes.

E.M. Brent-Dyer, The school at the chalet (1925), 5

Amazingly, this description is on the very first page of the entire sequence of chalet school stories. I am heartened to think that teenage girls of the 1920s would have been expected to know what old sherry looked like.

Labyrinthine tales of faction-fighting and off-the-record press briefings that reminded me of nothing so much as the British Labour Party

Azhar, they told me, was not the meek and inoffensive character he seemed, a point they illustrated by recounting labyrinthine tales of faction-fighting and off-the-record press briefings that reminded me of nothing so much as the British Labour Party. Eventually we turned to English cricket, and I was asked, why weren't Ramprakash and Hussain given the same number of chances as Hick? Before I could answer I was told, 'It's about this'. My colleague was touching the brown skin on his forearm.

M. Marqusee, War minus the shooting (1996), 121