I had no idea that they removed the feathers' shafts to make the pillows softer!

David Thomson's objectives in this big, ambitious book are nothing short of Promethean, for he aims to deliver both a comprehensive history of the movies and a Marshall McLuhan-style examination of the mentalités produced by watching films and television.

Two or three times a week a sort of Italian eil-wagen, a funereal and tumble-down, flea-ridden coach, with windows boarded up so high that, when seated, you cannot see out of them, and closed hermetically, after Italian fashion, shambles along at jog-trot pace between the two towns, and takes a livelong day, from early morning to late at night, to perform the journey.

[…]the TV programme Friends is influencing not only the way Irish people speak but also how they gesticulate. Now almost every utterance is accompanied by arms outstretched and palms turned upwards."