“... the most physical of facts cannot escape meaning (the empty face that intends its emptiness), and may contain or hint at a virtual existence (the unscathed nose which bears witness to the possibility of accident or assault). But the act of severity which announces writerliness is also its dissolution. Its double edge folds neatly up into the choice of a ...”

“... the adherents of rival conceptions, one cannot legitimately view their choices as irrational. Some may have misunderstood the facts or committed logical fallacies; but such moral choices, concerning how to conduct our lives as a whole, all face what he calls the burdens of judgment. The relevant evidence is complex and conflicting, and the weight to be ...”

“... peaceably coexist. This is especially true in most contemporary short stories, where the narrator may be wildly unreliable (first person) or reliably invisible (third person), but not wildly visible and reliable. Few younger contemporary writers risk the kind of biblical interference that Muriel Spark hazards, or that V.S. Naipaul practises in A House for Mr ...”

“... or neutralised. Advocates of releasing genetically engineered organisms into the environment may stress how unlikely it is that the gene will spread through wild populations, but the prospect of using genes designed to do just this is sure to alarm anti-GM activists. Anyway creating such an organism is still technically challenging – the scheme to ...”

“... I will not tolerate comparison with Bentley. Bentley is alone and supreme.’ However, ‘they may compare me with Porson if they will.’ He was willing, that is, to be compared only with the runner-up for the title of greatest English classical scholar. Ordinary readers, even if they have a bit of Latin, can have little notion of what it means to know it ...”

“... British forces are largely confined to their camps around Basra. A ‘national unity government’ may be established but it will not be national, will certainly be disunited and may govern very little. ‘The government could end up being a few buildings in the Green Zone,’ one minister said. The army and police are ...”

“... the corporate first division. On the strength of its success, it made another evolutionary leap in May 1990, by opening the first Super Crown in Alexandria, Virginia. These new establishments were (for the time) mega-large: public library-sized, as their publicity pointed out. A Super Crown was duly erected on South Lake, replacing its diminutive ...”

“... imaginatively creative figure than as an Enlightenment action man and civil rights advocate. This may be a suitable characterisation for the early 21st century, but it underplays the extent to which Voltaire’s life was driven as much by a determined quest for literary immortality as ‘a life in pursuit of freedom’, as Pearson subtitles his ...”

“... official reason her husband has never returned, but weariness with his wife’s emotional violence may be the reason behind the official one. Thirteen-year-old Matilda, Dolores’s daughter, has her mother’s intelligence without her frightening aggressiveness. Quick and sympathetic, she is the one who notes that it is ‘those dogs and chickens that had ...”

“... morituri whose deaths might seem as edifying as a snuff film. Nonetheless, low brutes though they may have been (among Roman elites, the term ‘gladiator’ could be used as an insult – i.e. ‘thug’ or ‘scum’), gladiators occupied a polyvalent position in Roman elite culture. They were scum who could die like heroes, the lowest of the low, but they ...”

“... if the magnitude of the event is considered – the loss of very few lives. From this moment we may consider France as a free country.’ By the end of the Reign of Terror in 1793-94 and two decades of war with other great powers, the loss of life had turned out to be much greater than Dorset thought. Yet the awesomeness of 1789 as a model of human ...”

“... shown they won’t for two maybe three generations, those maestros of exposition, and that may be what’s driven the poets to this bluff of severely impartial impudence. I was thinking this walking home in the dark, the too-early dark of November, shivering, towards my apartment on a promontory, fingers stiff hauling staples, wondering if it was the ...”

“... to his exquisite lip. ‘No need to panic, folks. Our friend is but the first in a series that may well turn out to be infinite, if past experience is any indicator.’ The clock is running over, and an octopus wears my wallet ...”

“... Alert also on the subway and don’t feign Ignorance because, though Franco is still dead, long may Franco ...”

“... an extra dictionary; we’d be foolish to raise our own and not join them; especially since they may become President one ...”