“The average multiplex is surely not long for this world. Already, 85 percent of Hollywood’s business comes from home entertainment—DVDs and the like. Suits me. Or so I thought until, on the way home from the hell of Harry Potter, I stopped to buy the third boxed set in the “Looney Tunes Golden Collection.” Loved the first two: Daffy, Bugs, Porky, beautifully restored, tons of special features. But, for some reason, this new set begins with a special announcement by Whoopi Goldberg explaining what it is we’re not meant to find funny: “Unfortunately at that time racial and ethnic differences were caricatured in ways that may have embarrassed and even hurt people of colour, women and ethnic groups,” she tells us sternly. “These jokes were wrong then and they’re wrong today”—unlike, say, Whoopi Goldberg’s most memorable joke of recent years, the one at that 2004 all-star Democratic Party gala in New York where she compared President Bush to her, um, private parts. There’s a gag for the ages.”
- Mark Steyn in the Chicago Sun-Times

“Can you report it happened at the cheap end?”
- Resident of Paritai Drive to Herald reporter after a P lab exploded there on Friday night.

“Due to changing climatic conditions, 1-in-100-year events can now happen at any time”.
- Radio NZ news

“Florence in the 15th century – the quattrocento – must have been a lot like New York after the Second World War....”
- Teaser for article on Slate

“It was indeed a revelation to learn that half of the most popular cookbooks sold worldwide are inspired by British cuisine (“Books for cooks”, November 5th). But isn't it sad that very few Britons appear to have actually read them.”
- Letter to the Economist