“... decades earlier to her liberation from her small-town life and her awkward, angry, unhappy younger self. Her misery is riveting, and we can’t even look away from her laxative-induced bowel movements: ‘torrential, oceanic, as though all of my insides had melted and were now gushing out’. The novels share themes but are written in starkly different ...”

“... while, in darkened rooms, factional rivalries decided policy. This view – too reliant on the self-congratulatory accounts of diplomats, who always believe they are closer to the workings of power than they really are – has been vigorously challenged by any number of historians.Hunting the Falcon is written as though it’s indisputable that the rise ...”

“... cries out, again and again, ‘I didn’t! I swear I didn’t,’ before her protests give way to self-doubt and depression. ‘I suppose I must have.’ Each time she gives in, Gregory’s face flashes with something like arousal. ‘Yes. YES,’ he says. ‘That’s right: you’re imagining things.’Gregory’s chief motivation isn’t sadism but ...”

“... Renata seems less a character based on a person than a projection of the narrator’s own self-hatred, the two representing a psychic split in which both ageing wife and ugly stepdaughter are duelling aspects of the same person. Similarly, the women in The Fate of Mary Rose (written five years later) are slippery projections of the narrator, a ...”

“... contesting ‘conventional monikers of left and right’. Diagonalists, in this typology, mostly self-identify as middle-class and are disproportionately self-employed. Klein is particularly interested in the wellness-anti-vaxxer connection, which she thinks is partly to do with all the yoga teachers going bust over ...”

“... Badar (‘an ex-houseboy turned flunky in a small hotel’) and Karim (a ‘lanky, soft-spoken, self-possessed’ civil servant) there’s Karim’s wife, Fauzia (a ‘composed and tranquil’ teacher and ‘book rat’). For a time, after the non-theft episode, the trio live together. Their struggles are those common to many young people: how to make a ...”

“... set of the head. After a little while something else occurs: the splitting-off of a protoplasmic self that insinuates itself into every part of the flat. Like smoke, it wisps into corners and under sofas, investigating places that are too awkward for the body to go, and which never get dusted. It’s almost like a dance, a floating ...”

“... vacated. A spoon and umbrella have become relics, relayed with delicate attention to tone. The self-portraits, many of which feature facial expressions inspired by Rembrandt’s, extend passing moods beyond their natural lifespan. Arikha depicted so many overcoats that it almost seems a compulsion – it’s hard not to think of those who died of exposure ...”

“... Siken’s new work shows him coming to terms with his changed body: ‘I wanted to defend my new self from my old self. I didn’t want to be him anymore. You live on this side now.’ The term ‘disability gain’ refers to the strengths or capacities that can arise from disabled experience. (Many blind people, for ...”

“... the cracked bark of the peeling plane-trees. * So I planned to get quicker, leaner, braver, more Self-effacing: I’d pick my way between The mounds of junk cast off by warring factions, cleverly Disguised and idly humming. I swam midstream With the freshwater boys, and lounged on rocks At evening. Meanwhile the air slowly thickened With intrigue. Blueprints ...”

“... who owns and controls    the data. That’s what we’re looking at, labour cheap, replaceable, self-replicating, marginal, contracted out    into smaller and smaller units. Them? Hordes of them, of depleted economic, social value,    who don’t count, in any situation, in anyone’s eyes, and won’t count, ever, no matter what happens,    the ...”

“... decide, in the end, to take her advice and forget it. As she turns to favour you with that self-same rose, you might notice how her shoulder blades jut and curve like the folded wings of an angel, how she smells very slightly of civet, how her nose is off-true, as if she had once been the victim of a random attack, how the dark of her eye can bring you ...”

“... and carer.The other gods perfect themselves; they choose          their fearsome or awesome self-presentationin detail – whether beautiful or sublime,          violet-lidded, or plaited, or shining hair loose –when they face a congregation.          She can’t, or won’t. She doesn’t have the time.(Aetia, II/48)Zeus (I read here) once ...”

“... of what we say inside and outside philosophy is strictly meaningless. But there is pleasure in self-denial, especially when it involves sweeping away the results of other people’s self-indulgence. Anyway, the book is written with such spirit and dash, that, though it is an attempt to limit our minds, it is ...”

“... as he is to opponents whom his antics put off their stroke? McEnroe is a perfectionist, and self-hatred and self-castigation are the obverse side of his perfectionism. Evans tells us that most of his bad language on court is directed against himself, even though some obtuse umpires don’t realise it. At Wimbledon in ...”