“... gratifying that people die while watching it, round and round for ever, in an endless loop. David Foster Wallace always had trouble finishing his novels. And yet he put in this one a thought so absorbing and delightful that you could easily imagine yourself, like the rat in the experiment, pressing the lever over and over. ‘Thousands of times an ...”

“... and cities, supporting 1400 projects, far more than any other country in Europe. According to David Mackay, a former officer in the Parachute Regiment who was project manager of the Glasgow CityWatch CCTV system for two years, ‘so positive has central government support been that, by 1997, the bulk of Home Office expenditure on crime prevention was ...”

“... Bathurst every week or so. He told her about his father, Gerwyn, who, no matter how hard the young Bert worked, always worked him harder. About his son, David: ‘No idea about farming (“heart’s not in it”), no idea about land (“stupid notions”), no idea about looking after animals (“up too ...”

“... virility. The artist as gentleman, the artist as courtier, the artist as thinker, the artist as a young man or woman, the artist as artist and handsome figure: these are some of the varieties of representation of the artist from the Reformation and Renaissance to, say, David Hockney. Van Dyck made numerous ...”

“... a radical change. Rex Smail-Turner, one of High Hampton’s bachelor masters, accompanies young Jules home one Christmas, and quickly sets about ingratiating himself with the family. His success is complete. Henriette falls in love with him, and since he is already her husband’s lover, they establish a ménage à trois. With Rudolf’s death, the ...”

“... is a theme that informs the whole book. In an autobiographical opening, Keegan evokes a bolshie young student killing time in a loaned Manhattan apartment, who found among the stock of records there The War Speeches of Winston Churchill. ‘The effect was electrifying.’ As he listened to the orations of 1940, with their artful changes of tempo and their ...”

“... and prodigious energy. In answer to the question ‘What shall I do research on?’ Medawar tells young people to choose an important problem and to become apprenticed to a senior scientist. I was lucky as a young man to find both. The biochemist husband of a cousin of mine tipped me off about the importance of ...”

“... wife is suffering a nervous breakdown, nor why he receives messages from well-wishers like ‘the David and Jonathan Society, a newly-formed group of young, caring, Jewish faggots’. Joshua’s mother runs a massage parlour called Oral is Beautiful in Winnipeg which offers bilingual services. This is hardly ...”

“... A detective is chatting to a young local at a crime scene, the body a few feet away, all the technicians and policemen going about their business. What has happened, the boy says, is that the dead man, who has been coming every Friday to a craps game on the street and snatching all the money as soon as the pot grew large enough for him, got killed because one of the other players ran out of patience ...”

“... Oakey, from Sheffield, was a hospital porter; he lived for alienation, the post-industrial, David Bowie, and having a show-stopping haircut. He was the singer in the Human League. His hair was long on one side, covering the entire right half of his face, and short on the other. He ‘had the perfect postmodernist haircut for the perfect postmodernist ...”

“... hearing a ‘sharp, prickly, stinging cry’, and delving in the hay to find a fieldmouse with six young ones suckling at her teats. The pulsing of the waterfalls, the springing of the forest trees spoke to him because their energies corresponded to his own. A missionary, Samuel Young, who explored glaciers with him in ...”

“... A great Irish lady, her disgraced nephew and a young priest with strong Republican sympathies are driving through Dublin on St Patrick’s Day, 1916. ‘They were speaking of patriots, Dublin associations of famous rebels, ancient and modern.’ Merrion Square evokes the memory of a distinguished Irishman whom the English put on trial ...”

“... Ertegun (‘What radio station is gonna play this crap?’).The album ended up in the hands of a young David Toop. Unspooling its peculiarly effective mixture of sideshow fraudulence, oneiric hokum and deeply coded, deadly serious New Orleans folklore on a mono Dansette in a friend’s bedroom – a device that was hardly up to deciphering ‘the ...”

“... The​ day David died, I was in the Urbana Free Library, in the How to Organise section. I was always searching for ways to corral my home. Paper and books were my biggest downfall, but clothes didn’t stay on hangers and dishes multiplied. A lot of things multiplied. Especially books about how to organise your house ...”

“... creeps’). Those easily offended should on no account read the following quote: This was not a young man making love to a girl. This was the meeting of twin souls. The light covering of flesh was so transmuted with ecstasy that early passion became a heavenly embrace of white fiery flame. There are joys so complete, so all perfect, that one should not ...”