“... I’ve paid my dues.’ Jones just shook his head, as though amazed at the depth of our shared self-deception, and then said: ‘You people have fucked the whole thing up. When we get there we’re going to do things differently.’ I remember sitting there thinking, ‘He’s confusing class and race. To get “there” he has to become us, and us is not ...”

“... from a dais. This is what a male cult looks like.In the novel they’re more of a ‘self-flagellating men’s group’ than a hate mob. Black Bag isn’t ostensibly about politics, but good fiction taps into the zeitgeist. Earlier in the book there’s a telling conversation about masculinity: ‘There’s a whole contingent of men who are lost ...”

“... come fast and smudged). There was low-pitched music on a loop-tape and snaps of herself, in that self-same dress, with dancing partners who had about them a feverish look, a touch of delirium: just what he felt each time she drew him in. He turned in his sleep. Her breasts were honeycombs and her womb a hive. The Queen in Rapture A summer of storms. A ...”

“... is multiplied. Looking at things closely leads to wondering what they are called. The sporadic self-education in natural history that goes with picking up pretty pebbles, shells and plants on country walks, and noticing the fauna, sometimes calls for my kind of optics. We are not like the old ornithologists who made their identifications from dead ...”

“... With whom am I speaking, are you one or many, what are u, are u, do I make my-self clear, is this which we called speech what u use, are u a living form such as theform I inhabit now letting it speak me. My window tonight casts light onto the snow,I cast from my eye a glance, a touchless touch, tossed out to capture this shine wecast ...”

“... home- produced. The tribal creature is alone With only tribal words to help him blend His uncloned self with all humanity. But metaphor is often out of date. I find a powerful trope: ‘the straitjacket Of all our childhoods’, but I’ve never seen A straitjacket – drugged, behind a screen, The madman of today can raise a racket And none of it will reach ...”

“... world, at speed, the river beneath, always trying to beat his record,With me beside him in that self-same seat, the blur of tail fins, cables, skyThrough that curvilinear windshield, across bridges for the most part, but not just.Every year Murph would flip cars, trading in the 88 for a 98 Custom Sports Coup,345 horsepower Starface engine, dual rear ...”

“... by a few stern words from Andy McNab (‘Gulf War hero and ex-SAS man’); a severe and self-congratulatory leader reminded readers that ‘this is the third time the Sun has planted a “bomb” at the heart of a supposedly ultra-secure zone.’ If The Investigator ‘had been a terrorist, the third in line to the throne could have been dead by ...”

“... pages of the London Review of Books’. The piece might cause you to consider whether it’s self-indulgent and irresponsible to draw attention to the shortcomings of a government, or merely the duty of a free press. It might encourage you to think for a moment about whether or not it would be a good thing if the government weren’t ever criticised from ...”

“... from the first, neither botany nor calligraphy. Even at his least traditional and generic, he is self-subduing, and his line can at times give a sense of costraint, which evokes the disciplines of a craft, and other disciplines too. But he is present, he expressed himself, in everything he did. His floral work can be consulted in books and in museums, and ...”

“... bedroom nine foot squareyour lust your tears your choice of good and evilyour Biro and your refill.Self-Pity with Everything Grease is undignified,Vinegar’s sordid;On the back of the newspaperSomeone is murdered.She was a dry-cleaner,He was a builder;He must have noticed herJust to have killed her.Yes, to get rid of you,Someone must bother –Someone must ...”

“... your stomach . . . by having a "rear” daily’. A remarkably frank passage on the perils of self-abuse – ‘you all know what it is to have at times a pleasant feeling in your private parts’ – was left out of the original edition on the insistence of the publisher, much to the disappointment of Baden-Powell’s mother, whom he had consulted on ...”

“... all the Slow way. Perhaps Slow Food’s most radical achievement is to have wrested the appeal to self-gratification out of the clutches of the right, to have staked a claim for the left on the sensuous high ...”

“... forcefulness, though the play does sometimes get lost in the twists and turns of its hero’s self-study,’ or ‘As would be expected in Kant, the central argument on space and time is pursued with great – at times trying – subtlety, not to say a positive delight in showing that contrary arguments always end in logical impasse.’I am being ...”