First: I somewhere read Buckley’s advice on writing fiction; and one point of his always stuck in my craw. If I recall, he said something like when you write a novel, you can always get away with one big coincidence, but never more. Ever since then, when reading a novel I come across the second coincidence, it bugs me.

Second: In the “Debate 1984: Socialism or Capitalism“, between capitalists-Objectivists John Ridpath and Leonard Peikoff, ans socialist-Canadians Gerry Caplan and Jill Vickers, I’ve always vividly remembered one of the comments of Caplan, when he tried to denigrate the performance of Ridpath and Peikoff by comparing them to the performance of Buckley at some debate years before, when he was at the “height of his powers”–Buckley was, said Caplan, “Fay and insouciant, fresh up from Yale…” Something about that turn of phrase I just found marvelous (though I despised Caplan and his giggling co-idiot Vickers).