“... stick and run it through the corridor of wilderness. It fills a bit with water the first time. Is self-erased. The second time it does not fill. It leaves a mark where my stick ran. I make another (cursive) mark. How easily it bends to cursive, snakes towards thought. Looking back I see the birds eating the bird. The other way my gaze can barely reach ...”

“... kin. The only unfamiliar diagnosis he offers is that Africa, unlike Europe, has no tradition of self-criticism, and perhaps that is ‘why, in the race of continents, Africa is being left behind’. But this is doubtful: the cultural capacity for self-criticism is a splendid thing, but many parts of the world where it ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... taste for foreign fashions was seen as an affront to class distinctions as well as to national self-sufficiency. Although the import and sale of Indian cotton was banned in Britain and France for much of the 18th century, it continued to be shipped via Britain to Africa, where some of it was bartered for slaves, and then on to the ...”

“... under perestroika had first taken outspoken nationalist form. But unlike Russian nationalism, a self-destructive and anti-democratic force that could only lead to the end of the USSR, in Estonia there was no contradiction between the national and democratic movements. All three Baltic states would become democratic republics, but of the trio, elections had ...”

“... but something deeper, not so much an intellectual as a psychological limitation: a capacity for self-deception with far-reaching political consequences.‘India was in my blood and there was much in her that instinctively thrilled me,’ he told his readers.She is very lovable and none of her children can forget her wherever they go or whatever strange fate ...”

“... so small, because it completely accepts the nobility and its right to exist. There is a necessary self-contradiction here: a party that would reject the nobility as well as belief in the laws would straightaway have the entire population behind it, but such a party cannot come into being, because no one dares to reject the nobility. We live on the razor’s ...”

“... and brought and kept them hereIs lost: and for a while they join a terrible equality,Are virtuous, self-sacrificing, free:And so insidious is this libertyThat those surviving it will bearAn even greater servitude to its root:Believing they were whole, while they were brave;That they were rich, because their loot was great;That war was meaningful, because they ...”

“... in Manchester, who was sacked in June for selling too diverse a range of books. Will Self took up the cause to have him reinstated, but at the time of writing, the manager of the shop in question is called Andy Rossiter. Now Waterstone’s have been criticised for trying to force small publishers into selling all their titles to the chain at a ...”

“... Paume and carried a tube of red paint with which to threaten sharp-suited gropers on the Metro. A self-portrait from 1963 shows the teenage artist on the cusp, turning from Cookham schoolgirl to Juliette Gréco: a headscarf, knotted Sloane-style under the chin, with a 1960s fringe poking out at the top; steady look, quizzical mouth.England has been slower ...”

“... could call it a lip’. Before she could allow the mountains in ‘Arrival at Santos’ to be ‘self-pitying’, she had to impose the words ‘who knows?’; in ‘The Armadillo’, when she mentioned ‘the stars’, she had to correct herself to say ‘planets, that is’; in ‘Sandpiper’, she wrote: He runs, he runs straight through it, watching his ...”

“... manipulator of his fellow senators. His political gifts were perfectly suited to a small club of self-important men whom he could get at one on one. He alternately flattered them shamelessly and openly threatened them, never missing an opportunity to get them on the hook for something they either coveted or feared. Everyone knew that Johnson was the conduit ...”

“... modernity, had the easily underestimated Lada. Was making cars once an indicator of national self-sufficiency? Is it still? Rover, Morris, Austin, Triumph, Vauxhall, Aston Martin, Rolls-Royce, Mini, Land Rover: when we hear the names of these firms, we think of the cars they made, and of cars driven by parents or grandparents, sisters or old ...”