The pamphlet teaches the skills that skills that Benzer’s former labmates would now need to learn, including propaganda, “that branch of lying which … - Jonathan Weiner

All times seem special to those who live in them.

For all species, including our own, the true figure of life is a perching bird, a passerine, alert and nervous in every part, ready to dart off in an instant. Life is always poised for flight. From a distance it looks still, silhouetted against the bright sky or the dark ground; but up close it is flitting this way and that, as if displaying to the world at every moment its perpetual readiness to take off in any of a thousand directions.

One test of a true clock is its ability to keep time through a wide range of temperatures. A clock that speeds up in hot weather and slows down in cold weather is not a clock, although it may make a good thermometer.