“... had) and Saul Bellow’s voice is nearly musical (in the way of an advertising jingle) with self-belief. On the whole, the American CD is more satisfying because it gives you a collection of writers who seem to revel in the performance of themselves. Henry Miller sounds like a longshoreman ordering his breakfast. But the overall prize goes to ...”

“... of sensory input, our mind enters a state of severe “stimulus hunger”, and the subjective self emerges forcefully.’ So the unatmospheric lighting in my cellar is the problem after all. However, ‘in neurological terms, there is no consensus on the biochemical and neurophysiological mechanism of hallucination in a state of sensory ...”

“... Today, seven out of ten immigration removal centres in Britain are privately run. Instances of ‘self-harm’ are common in these places: in the last four months of 2007 alone, 42 detainees required medical attention after injuring themselves. Asylum seekers facing possible deportation to countries where they’re likely to be jailed, tortured or killed ...”

“... that X event would happen, Downing Street was ensuring that there was no way it could. The self-cancelling circularity of the thing would cause even the toughest political correspondent to wonder whether he was in the right line of work. It would be nice to think that the government was busy conducting a Schrödinger-like quantum experiment with cats ...”

“... took place, the legal justification for the kill order – that it was an act of national self-defence against an imminent threat, as described in Article 51 of the UN Charter – looked shaky, to say the least, and will be challenged. Aerial drones have somehow come to stand for the scary future of war. They hover invisibly overhead, and can fire ...”

“... stern, and suffused with Buddhist notions of impermanence, suffering and the abnegation of self, quite unlike Pickard’s conversational, often playful tone and distinctly unphilosophical outlook. He is curious, restless, anxious to get out on the fells, interested in the weather, topography, sky, birdlife (he’s a serious birder) and especially the ...”

“... homogeneity to appeal to the mass market, they are moving ‘ever closer to the reality of a self-sustaining city’ where, like the Edwardians, nobody need know they are at ...”

“... the painting nod to humanist ideas (the skull, for instance, might symbolise Erasmus’ concept of self-knowledge). The painting was a gift to a Roman Catholic, though, and may be, as the catalogue suggests, ‘a painted argument in their intellectual exchange of ideas’. The volume of Dürer’s journals that describes his trip to Antwerp in 1520 is the ...”

“... of the Ludi Magni might be a painting about painting, echoing Howard Hodgkin’s work. But where self-reflexiveness led Hodgkin into pathos, it exhilarates Ayres. Not haunted, as he was, by the ghosts of human figures, she reaches for her globs of paint as if to shout for shouting’s sake. The upwards tumbling torrent of A Belt of Straw and Ivy Buds ...”

“... is a bull shot, like the cocktail at the bar in Langan’s Brasserie. It consists of Langan’s self-portrait, written in the sleepless marches, to which the art critic Brian Sewell has contributed a memoir of friendship which will come as a pleasant surprise to readers more accustomed to his inspired Sowerberry in the columns of the Evening Standard. Last ...”

“... Fiction hadn’t happened: written as if for publication in the Strand Magazine for 1899? The self-consciousness of the style shows that it is artifice, not artlessness: ‘If it had not been for the shooting and the firing, the speeding and the general traffic violations I doubt if we would have got to Trafalgar Square.’ That was the ...”

“... the necessary ruthlessness, The soaring meanness that pinpoints success. We loved that lack of self-love, and your smile, Rueful, at your own silliness.                             Meanwhile, Your lungs collapsed, and the machine, unstrained, Did all your breathing now. Nothing remained But death by drowning on an inland sea Of ...”

“... at number four). The list gives ‘politics’ as the source of their wealth. At number 11 is a self-made real-estate tycoon called Malik Riaz Hussain who has made no secret of his generous donations to both Zardari and Sharif’s parties as well as the private accounts of politicians and generals. Hussain grew rich from a contract to build gated cities for ...”

“... came out. Litt, who has possibly the most suspiciously clever name for a novelist since Will Self, has been acclaimed by the Guardian as ‘one of the foremost young lions of British hip-lit’. An unsportingly anonymous Londoner, by contrast, sticking their neck out on amazon.co.uk, described Corpsing as ‘a waste of a perfectly good ...”

“... evidence to be used in court to procure the conviction of terrorist suspects seems mysterious and self-defeating: why deny yourself such a key weapon in the ‘war against terror’, especially if there are ‘several hundred’ terrorists already in this country planning attacks, as the prime minister has recently claimed? Until 1985, the interception of ...”