“... time, personal and external constraints in behaviour became impersonal and internalised, until self-control, in the form of a new ‘economy of instincts’, became automatic – a process akin to the one Weber describes in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, when a religiously rooted attitude to work gradually became detached from its ...”

“... difference between the Cook Islands and French Polynesia is political. The Cook Islands achieved self-government from New Zealand in 1965. After the oppressiveness of Tahiti, Rarotonga was like a breath of fresh air. It was gorgeous, too: extinct volcanic spires, their tips lost in drifting mists and clouds; jungle-clad slopes ending in white sandy ...”

“... as in ‘military drag’, ‘clerical drag’ – where cross-dressing is not involved. A self-consciousness is implied, and with it a consciousness of effect. Clothes are being used to underscore a particular choice of persona, and here the notion of choice is very important. We can choose just who we want to be and reinforce the choice by changing ...”

“... a level and left the fundamental problems unsolved’. ‘Too high a level’ was the level of self-reflection – knowledge of one’s states of consciousness. This leaves quite untouched the prior question of the nature of the mental states themselves – the pains, the tickles, the seeings of red, the smellings of roses. How do these spring from mere ...”

“... three resident Serbian families and one Croat. The Partisans may have carried the idea of local self-management down from the mountains with the ideological fervour of Marxists, but here power was still yoked to ethnicity. Ironically, a Jew saved Nikola Blazevic’s life. As railway superintendent, Blazevic had used his prior notice of plans for the ...”

“... this kind of thinking, would indeed have taken it for granted as the theoretical foundation of his self-esteem. In a utilitarian democracy he would be able to explain his ‘function’ thus, albeit with shyly downcast eyes. And yet he would also by that date have known that the theory was failing to hold up, or was turning into an impossible ideal. The new ...”

“... his longing to reveal himself, in his writing, was made difficult by an equally strong fear of self-revelation. This is not a new concept – something very similar was seen by Winnicott as constituting the basic psychological make-up of all artists – but that doesn’t make it any less plausible. What, then, were the childhood experiences that led to ...”

“... years. And it contained, as it almost always does, a strong grain of sense beneath the deliberate self-parody. He is right that something must be seriously wrong when a senior British journalist can prefer to edit the Mail rather than the Times. (Indeed, he might have added that matters are even worse when his own editor-in-chief, Max Hastings, rejects the ...”

“... outside the charmed circle maintained: that for all his human warmth Fox was an intensely self-centred being. In fact, there are other clues, beginning with his mother’s engaging description of him as a child, entering eagerly and intelligently into any conversation, yet ready to take up a book when his parents were reading, ‘vastly amused’ and ...”

“... somnambulist helplessly perpetuates her ancestral crimes’. The Gothic situation is always a self-circularising time-warp from which, however, the reader has broken free, carrying with him, as it were, the now emancipated girl and the radical humanist lifestyle. Terror is cosily isolated, enjoyed because left behind. Politically speaking, there is an ...”

“... a loss. He was gripped by two warring impulses: emulation and escape. Free to become himself, what self should he become? There was still a chance, he at first seems to have thought, that he might turn out to be a novelist with gifts of his own. He published five novels, and then stopped. It was not that the books were rubbish; indeed Bron is at pains to let ...”

“... that needs to be administered vaginally’ – is lost beneath the weight of the character’s self-pity. In short, the author is everywhere and nowhere in this novel. For ever wriggling inside his characters in order to ventriloquise his own aphorisms, he can never get enough distance from them to grasp the real foolishness or enormity of their ...”

“... to see, unless it is that unlike most novelists she made her books out of a busy, open, outgoing self: not a brooded, secretive, internal one. The fact remains that I would rather read about them and about their background, in such an excellent biography as this one is, than re-enter today the world of her own novels. Jenny Uglow is an erudite ...”

“... of packaging. Perhaps we need the arts more than ever in times of crisis and recession: better self-expression with a pen than a gun. But it’s the greatest competition of them all, Manchester’s bid to host the Olympic Games in the year 2000, which provides the rationale behind the acceleration of public and private spending on the arts and city ...”

“... Dr Sarkhou is a dapper man. With his smart suit and manicured moustache he looks every bit the self-assured consultant, the established performer on the international conference circuit. But as he talks his emollient manner slips, his frustration at the insensitivity of Kuwait’s rulers grows. ‘It’s taken them a year to set up an official psychiatric ...”