How cordiale was my entente.

Prolific conservative commentator Paul Johnson, on a recent edition of the BBC's "Desert Island Discs," asked how many words he can produce in a day, now that he has reached his eighties.

"I can write up to 5,000. Jean-Paul Sartre, whom I knew when I lived in Paris, could write 20,000 words in a day!" [Beat.] "Of course, he was writing in French."