This was very good advice but she still thought that living in a major city was key

If you want to move to the city, you can, Miss Grehan said. And studying poetry at university is a wonderful thing to do. But more important is to read poetry, and write poetry, every day. It doesn’t have to be for long. If just once a day people read a poem instead of picking up their phone, I guarantee you the world would be a better place. When she had gone Elaine said that this was very good advice but she still thought that living in a major city was key.

P. Murray, The bee sting (2023), Loc. 800

This is not a time to speak, she says, but a time to keep silent

Carole takes a long drink of tea then stares into space. I cannot tell you how many people have fallen silent since Jim has been arrested, it is as though I am guilty somehow, why are we being made to feel guilty when it is an evil that has been done to us? Eilish finds herself watching the clock, she stands up, shaking her head. This is not a time to speak, she says, but a time to keep silent, everybody has grown afraid, our husbands have been taken from us and placed into this silence, there are times at night when I hear this silence as loud as death but it is not death just arbitrary arrest and detention, you must keep telling this to yourself over and over.

P. Lynch, Prophet song (2023), Loc. 589

I have always found a good sherry sufficient for my needs, but I dare say these American beverages are not unpalatable

‘Ah, yes; cocktails. A drink imported, I am told, from America. The custom of drinking cocktails at all hours of the day is on the increase, undoubtedly, amongst certain sections of society. I have always found a good sherry sufficient for my needs, but I dare say these American beverages are not unpalatable.

N. Blake (C. Day-Lewis), Thou shell of death (1936), 5

What is the point of investing in a process of learning about the world if there is almost no time to put that information to use?

Once I knew this stage was coming, interacting with these animals, especially the friendly ones, became poignant. Their time was so short. This discovery also made the puzzle of their large brains even more acute. What is the point of building a large nervous system if your life is over in a year or two? The machinery of intelligence is expensive, both to build and to run. The usefulness of learning, which large brains make possible, seems dependent on lifespan. What is the point of investing in a process of learning about the world if there is almost no time to put that information to use?

P. Godfrey-Smith, Other minds: the octopus and the evolution of intelligent life (2017), loc. 1,986

Shells were the mollusks’ response to what looks like an abrupt change in the lives of animals: the invention of predation. There are various ways of dealing with the fact that you are suddenly surrounded by creatures who can see and would like to eat you, but one way, a molluscan specialty, is to grow a hard shell and live within or beneath it.

P. Godfrey-Smith, Other minds: the octopus and the evolution of intelligent life (2017), loc. 550

Cephalopods are an island of mental complexity in the sea of invertebrate animals

Cephalopods are an island of mental complexity in the sea of invertebrate animals. Because our most recent common ancestor was so simple and lies so far back, cephalopods are an independent experiment in the evolution of large brains and complex behavior. If we can make contact with cephalopods as sentient beings, it is not because of a shared history, not because of kinship, but because evolution built minds twice over. This is probably the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien.

P. Godfrey-Smith, Other minds: the octopus and the evolution of intelligent life (2017), loc. 127 

Drink Less, Drink Better

In the decade of the 1990s, total French consumption of wine dropped just 2 percent, but the decline in the lower-quality wines that are drunk daily was much more severe, falling 19 percent. The number of French people drinking wine daily or almost daily fell from 46.9 percent in 1980 to 23.5 percent in 2000. And people in their early sixties are four times more likely to drink wine daily than those in their early thirties. Some wine officials try to find solace in the fact that on average the French are drinking better wines. Boire Moins, Boire Mieux (Drink Less, Drink Better) has become the mantra of French optimists who hope that the business can make up in quality what it is losing in quantity. The higher-quality wines governed by the Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée system accounted for only 14 percent of domestic sales in 1950 but are nearly 50 percent today.

G. M. Taber, Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine (2005), 281