two great things I learned today from the NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

1. From Freeman Dyson's review of physicist Frank Wilczek's book THE LIGHTNESS OF BEING: one of my favorite expressions (and inviolable principles for operating in the world), "it's better to ask forgiveness than ask permission," is also known as "the Jesuit Credo." Who knew?

2. From Dan Chiasson's review of John Ashbery's COLLECTED POEMS, 1956-1987:

Cliché was originally a typesetter's term for those plates devoted not to individual letters but to phrases so common that a slug was molded for them.