“... as she did say more than once – that experiencing the genius almost made up for the booze, the self-harm, the harm to others. What she seemed to care about most in life was painting. She knew what hers gained from looking at Pollock’s and resisting. The space at the Barbican is curious, and can be deadening, but on this occasion it has been put to use in ...”

“... are clearly a product of the late 1960s and early 1970s hippy shift from political action to ‘self-actualisation’, often through some kind of psychic or spiritual awakening. In The Lion, this shows itself in the doubled masculine crisis of a father’s midlife reinvention and a son’s journey from adolescence to manhood. Hoban’s work at times flows ...”

“... that alternative: an alternative which might be Britain’s – open, dynamic, entrepreneurial, self-confident, rich. When Blair went to America after 11 September he left his heart in Washington. He recently told the House of Commons that the alliance with the United States was a matter of faith; and I cannot think of another of our ‘allies’ for whom ...”

“... of America. She was shocked by the ‘overabundance of everything’ and the ‘complete self-confidence of individuals’. She told her brother and sister that most of New England is ‘wasted’. ‘It makes nonsense,’ she added, ‘of all the world-planning talk about cultivating the desert and the jungle – all they have to do is to cultivate ...”

“... in it. As Matthew Wickman puts it, in one of those weaselish generalities that suggest a lurking self-doubt, ‘most scholars believe his most significant poetic achievements are in Scots.’ In fact, the 1773 Poems begins with ‘Poems on Various Subjects’, 28 of them, all in English; this 84-page section is then followed by nine ‘Scots Poems’, taking ...”

“... smile and considerable charm . . . He struck me as the Danakil equivalent of a nice, rather self-conscious Etonian who had just won his school colours for cricket.’ In the Sudan in 1936 he still wore a white sweater with the Old Etonian colours. Later yet, he voted Liberal because Jo Grimond was an Old Etonian. The school gave him a taste for ...”

“... well beyond discomfort, impatience or rage. He appears to be involved in a protracted, existential self-immolation. He is in a hurry to reach death, but not before capturing the reader with the spectacle of his pyre. Petri wasn’t one to hedge his bets, and if his political dissent were not enough to trouble the censors, the sexual content of the poetry, or ...”

“... themselves possess.’ The bizarre possibility that Phillips intended to write an autobiographical self-help book rather than a novel may be the reason this book is so different in style from her previous fiction. Like Kate, Phillips married a doctor with two sons and became pregnant while caring for her mother through the terminal stages of cancer. MotherKind ...”

“... fictional interaction between the characters. Even so, Finkielkraut, who is portrayed as a self-important, power-hungry hypocrite, was not amused. ‘I am appalled,’ he told L’Express. ‘I have the unpleasant feeling of having been entirely dispossessed of myself.’ In the past, he complained, literature ‘at least had some relationship with ...”

“... enemies, then and afterwards, and there were whispers at the time that his wife was a cross and self-centred snob. John Sutherland’s vigorous account of Scott, published in 1995, broke ranks and was a welcome swerve from hagiography; studies of his in 19th-century publishing had delivered an earlier essay on Macrone. An acid test for the degree of candour ...”

“... to the ailing postbox and … The tuna-based salad, which renders the speaker insane, is pure self-indulgence, an excess which renders the author mildly insane too. There’s a Gogolian needlessness about it: reasonably funny in itself, but as a description of the writer’s own cackling momentum, completely winning. Like Dudley Moore, Barker is a ...”

“... But I was soon persuaded that the only sensible way to oversee financial markets is statute-backed self-regulation. It can’t be left to civil servants round whom the traders will run effortless rings. And it can’t be left to practitioners, who in an intensely competitive environment will inevitably subordinate the public interest to their own to a greater ...”

“... doing nothing is what I have to do to write. Or: writing is what I have to do to be my melancholy self. And be alone.Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the best days:I get on with the new novel. Smoke. Drink coffee. Smoke. Write. Stare at ceiling. Smoke. Write. Lie on the sofa. Drink coffee. Write.On Monday a man came to talk to her about depression and the ...”

“... behind the door. Góngora’s work is teasingly autobiographical. There is, for example, a witty self-portrait in the 1587 romance ‘Hanme dicho, hermanas’ (‘Sisters, they tell me’): He’s a ferocious poet, if there’s any in Libya, and when he’s seized by the poetry mania he’ll produce you loose verse as if he’s been purged, while with carob ...”

“... his friends better than the reader does. The vicissitudes of loserdom are described with wit and self-awareness. ‘I admit it tho, I’m getting too distracted now. Jesus. It’s not like a walkthrough anymore – more like a forum for some guy with Attention Deficit Disorder.’ The occasional descents into self-pity are ...”