Sciascia Leonardo — The Day of the Owl [438]

‘I’m not a well-read man: but there’s one or two things I do know, and they’re enough for me: the first is that we have a mouth under our noses – for eating more than talking … ’ … ‘I have a mouth too,’ said the captain, ‘but I can assure you that with it I eat only what you Sicilians call “Government bread”.’ — Sciascia Leonardo, The Day of the Owl, 438

Note

Don Mariano’s crude epistemology of silence (‘a mouth for eating more than talking’) parried by Bellodi’s ‘Government bread.’ The two principles — who can talk and who must stay silent — compressed into a domestic image.