In my latest Epoch Times column I say that, serious as Wuhan virus is, it’s teaching us a lot about preparing for something even worse.

“They seem to have opened it up a gear in the second period.”

Announcer on ESPN March 15, 1987 re the Edmonton Oilers.

“Even my own fears that Mr. Deeds would be too provincially American – too ‘apple pie’ – proved unfounded. ‘O-filling,’ ‘doodling,’ and ‘pixilated’ were as rib-tickling in Ulan Bator as they were in Allentown, Pa. Evidently what rings true in one heart will toll the same bell all over the world.”

Frank Capra The Name Above the Title

“The Blades looking for a comeback here... What else would they be looking for down three goals?”

Announcer on Roller Hockey on Vancouver cable channel 4 July 16, 1993

“I do so love fireworks. They are so unnecessary.”

John Gielgud, quoted by Richard John Neuhaus in First Things #153 (May 2005)

“let us keep in mind about these people that, whatever their language, culture, or religion, whatever peculiar thing they are wearing through their nose, whatever caliber item they have pointed at our head, they are people, too. They are just as dumb, stinky and ridiculous as we are.”

P.J. O’Rourke All the Trouble in the World

In Convivium I say the movie 1917 could have gone wrong in so many ways. Instead it surprised me by going very right in many ways, from avoiding cheap clichés about the Great War to a positive depiction of masculinity. Go see it if you haven’t.

“Vance… sat regarding Pfyfe drearily as if seeking to find some excuse for his existence, but utterly unable to do so.”

S.S. Van Dine The Benson Murder Case