"Odd, I thought to myself, how in all walks of life there are lives graced by dreams, and lives steeped in dullness. And when greatness strikes, the dreamer is prepared; grace softens the shock. But to the dull, greatness can be traumatic."

Frank Capra The Name Above the Title

"Nothing is so remote from us as the thing which is not old enough to be history and not new enough to be news."

G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News January 27, 1923, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 4 # 4 (Jan./Feb. 2001)

In my latest National Post column I say we won't get helpful answers on the Toronto mass shooting unless we ask the right questions.

"I mean treasure is treasure, for heaven’s sake. What’s the difference whether the treasure is money, or property, or even culture, or even just plain knowledge?"

The heroine in J.D. Salinger Franny and Zooey, quoted by Edward Tingley in First Things January 2002

"A wise man hears one word and understands two."

"a Yiddish proverb" quoted in BC Report December 28, 1998

"One science only will one genius fit/ So vast is art, so narrow human wit."

Alexander Pope, quoted in Marshall McLuhan The Gutenberg Galaxy