“I was a voracious reader, but you would be mistaken if you took that as evidence of my quality.”— Mordecai Richler The phrase “voracious reader” can be a loaded one, often without meaning to be…. Read More
“I guess I don’t subscribe to the twee school. I remember trying to lose our copy of Thomas the Tank Engine before I had to read it again. Life is a more dimensional and interesting… Read More
“Where we have strong emotions, we’re liable to fool ourselves.”— Carl Sagan Carl Sagan uttered these words in the groundbreaking TV series Cosmos, which aired on PBS in the fall of 1980. Sagan’s documentaries, and… Read More
“I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. I will not. And the government will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. Not now, not ever. The leader… Read More
“For better or worse, it is the commentator who has the last word.”— Vladimir Nabokov This observation from Vladimir Nabokov is spoken by one of the Russian-American novelist’s characters, and not a nice one, either…. Read More
“One should never trespass on kindness. Human kindness is like a defective tap: the first gush may be impressive, but the stream soon dries up.” — P.D. James I had come across a truncated version… Read More
“I hate it when actors use the word ‘journey.’ That’s not a f–king journey, winning a Spirit Award. Escaping from Ukraine is.” — John Waters I’ve been a fan of John Waters and his trashy-chic… Read More
“The other creatures with which we share this world have their rights too, but not speaking our language, they have no voice, no vote; it is our moral duty to take care of them.”— Roger… Read More
“Never apologize, never explain — didn’t we always say that? Well, I haven’t and I don’t.”— Marianne Faithfull Those words appear in the first of Marianne Faithfull’s memoirs, Faithfull: An Autobiography, which was published in… Read More
“As we all understand, you can take a man’s show, you can’t take a man’s voice.” — David Letterman I expect to see a lot of Stephen Colbert in the headlines this week, as the… Read More
“The press can be surprisingly easy to co-opt. But remember the Woodward-Darman law, which dictates that a friendship between reporter and source lasts only until it is profitable for one to betray the other.”— Maureen… Read More
“I’m not somebody who ever has regrets — I’m a great believer in doing things with the best of intentions, and then you learn rather than regret. There are lots of things I’ve learned by… Read More
“Some say that no one ever leaves Montreal, for that city, like Canada itself, is designed to preserve the past, a past that happened somewhere else.”— Leonard Cohen It’s been almost a decade since Leonard… Read More
“Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom, in the pursuit of truth as in the endeavor after a worthy… Read More
“I don’t know where my ideas come from. I will admit, however, that one key ingredient is caffeine. I get a couple cups of coffee into me and weird things just start to happen.”— Gary… Read More