“... many visits . . . have I found anyone about.’ The fact is, in Sebald nobody is ever about. This may be poetic but it seems to me a short cut to significance. 6 April, Yorkshire. The new organic shop in the village continues to do well, the walk down the lane to the Nissen hut always a pleasure even in the bitterest weather. There are sheep in the adjoining ...”

“... what you are interested in writing and to succeed in getting editors to pay for it, is a feat that may require pretty close calculation and a good deal of ingenuity. You have to learn to load solid matter into notices of ephemeral happenings, you have to develop a resourcefulness at pursuing a line of thought through pieces on miscellaneous and more or less ...”

“... that the office was lenient to the powerful. ‘Infamous’ sodomites were fewer in number but may have persisted throughout adulthood, pursuing relationships with other adults or taking the passive role. Rocke gives an average age for those men of 39 as opposed to 27, and they often remained unmarried. It is clear that Florence was unusual, though it’s ...”

“... In large parts of the South blacks were kept from voting by intimidation and trick and murder. It may indicate the atmosphere if I tell you that the New York Times had great difficulty finding a lawyer in Alabama who would represent the paper in the Sullivan case. When one did agree to take the case, and he invited the Times’s New York lawyer down to ...”

“... thing, although cruel leaders of lesser states, faced with the threat of prosecution for genocide, may, it is true, be deterred, they are just as likely to cling ferociously to power whatever the cost in human lives. Stimulated to think ahead, inveterate adventurers may even plot to eliminate any witnesses who might testify ...”

“... early in 1984. Assad lived just long enough to witness the total Israeli retreat from Lebanon in May 2000. He was probably the only Arab leader to earn America and Israel’s respect, having inflicted defeats on both. And he left a son to prolong his legacy. For the men who came to rule the United States with the inauguration of George W. Bush, the Syrian ...”

“... sensibility, on one’s cultural preferences and prejudices, and indeed on one’s politics. There may be a significant difference between getting the life I want and getting the life ‘we’ might want, between a certain kind of possessive, acquisitive individualism and a collective political project (the phrase ‘the life I want’ also implies a stability ...”

“... for each other. These thoughts and others came to me While I slept in my bed, And, for all I know, may have been whispered Into my ear by the black cat Who keeps a nightly vigil by my side, So mice don’t nibble my toes Or take shortcuts over my pillow. Things Need Me City of poorly loved chairs, bedroom slippers, frying pans, I’m rushing back to you ...”

“... gallery Christina Rossetti Lady Lassetter sits at her mirror; presented as a woodland frieze in May, her drapery is appliquéd with specimens of British botany. On the dresser’s marbled top a signed invitation can explain this flowered and zoomorphic frock, designed to be a favourite verse sartorialised. So, astride her décolletage squirrels skip and ...”

“... two plump rooks at roost each a singular stern mass of black gloss in their pomp – (early that May morning, in the college she had founded, I stood on the lawn promising I would tell him. As quietly, to herself almost, she said she wasn’t sure it was his, she’d lost it, whatever it was or might have been I remember how the sound of the choir from the ...”

“... end of Chapter XXXIV) Deer Mister Fitzpiers A’m writen to thee now to tell thee what may lie heavy on thy belly! Yon hiair that Barber Percomb took that wer my hiair, by t’Holy Book, a zold it to’m – an’ all to deck proud Mistress Charmond’s hiead an’ neck! Zo what thou stroak’st in’t hers but mine, zo pirty, vrom a maid divine it ...”

“... Beyond the plywood walls, out in the open, grief woven in our hearts. Martha Mavroidi sing, we may get ...”

“... in the dark beneath the skull. My son is learning insects ladybird and beetle Painted Lady may or dragonfly and watching I think of how the mind evolves one meeting at a time spider and fly the lizard stage where everything is tuned to warmth the moonlit phase a month of songbirds in this house amid the fields we’ve rented for a summer how the sounds ...”

“... his nose. Quack, his partner, is dressed similarly. Quack: ‘There’s talk in Washington that we may be going to war.’ Quips: ‘I know how to stop it.’ Quack: ‘How?’ Quips: ‘For starters . . .’ He makes a peremptory fart on his horn. Quack waits: ‘That’s it?’ Quips: ‘No. After that we blitz the enemy with popcorn.’ Quack: ‘Who’s ...”

“... nude Or the woman standing at her basin. Short of work and short of ideas, Omissible. Though I may have been Projecting, as my sister implied. When what one sets out to do gets replaced, Devolved amongst cicadas, stray peeps Of hummingbirds. Sand, dust and my bootprints – At night a porous rain that regrooms The country lane. The horse-owners Nodding ...”