“... bright object, meaning to peck at it. And then he didn’t.’ Nawab’s failure to transcend his self-interest, in the moment of the other man’s death, coexists with his resilience, which allows him to survive, makes him what he is. ‘Six shots, six coins thrown down, six chances, and not one of them killed him, not Nawabdin Electrician.’ There’s no ...”

“... economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton in a paper published in 2015. These deaths are the result of self-inflicted violence, either suicides or drug and alcohol overdoses (‘poisonings’ in the language of the report), particularly affecting white Americans living in the parts of the country that voted overwhelmingly for Trump – the South, the ...”

“... a place to which people have been running for years, whether to escape or to find some invented self. After the reading I took questions. Then the moderator announced that there was time for only one more question. A woman, who had been standing the whole time at the end of the large room, with her back to the wall, spoke. ‘I am Syrian,’ she said. ‘I ...”

“... of invisible boundaries recurs later in the book, this time in a different key. Frank, even in his self-imposed exile, remains attached to the rituals of suburban masculinity, chief among them the keeping of an immaculate garden. He’s frustrated by a persistent bald spot on the lawn and fences it off, scolding their dog whenever she gets too ...”

“... in the Maghreb. One device in the novel misfires: Gaddafi has an attachment to Van Gogh’s self-portrait with a bandaged ear. Khadra introduces this early on, in order to set up an unsuccessful parting shot: the dying rais remembers his mother telling him, when he was a boy, that he was deaf to reason in one ear, while the other listened only to ...”

“... Artemidorus wrote, ‘is a sign that our spirit admonishes and foretells us affectionately the self same thing worthy to be thought upon.’ I appreciate the gentleness of that ‘affectionately’; some of my own consultations become shared reflections on what recurring dreams might mean. A patient with a recurring bad dream may choose to suppress it ...”

“... to offer. The US was caught on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, as a proud promoter of self-determination, it wished to identify itself with anti-colonialism. On the other, it felt obliged to show solidarity with Britain, which was the archetypal imperial power and a valued partner in the Cold War. In attempting to satisfy both requirements, the US ...”

“... black silk doublet, an outfit pegged somewhere between modesty and ostentation. He fixes us with a self-assured gaze; there is the trace of a smile. He holds a pair of soft gloves; a later portrait, in which he looks more like a courtier, has him clasping a purse, suggesting the precariousness of riches as much as their importance. Analysis of this second ...”

“... means absolute – tendency to increased brain size, more flexible behaviour, an enlarged sense of self, and autobiographical memory. Bigger brains require larger skulls, more easily balanced by being placed on the top of the body, favouring an upright posture with no need for a tail as a counterbalance. So the evolution of humanoid creatures could perhaps ...”

“... Nietzsche thought had vanished from the earth.’ It is a stirring peroration and one whose self-declared ‘pessimism’ and sober wisdom read all the more persuasively in the light of public events, seven years on from the essay’s initial appearance in New Left Review. If – once again – I call its direction of travel ‘odd’, it is because I ...”

“... There are​ self-trained artists; then there are self-willed ones. Edward Burne-Jones, like Vincent Van Gogh, was one of the latter. That’s to say, he decided, in 1855, to be an artist – he was studying for a theology degree at Oxford at the time – without knowing whether he was capable of being one, perhaps even without considering absence of talent a potential obstacle ...”

“... of birds.The concept of body ownership is premised on dualism: the idea that one’s thinking self can exercise rights over one’s material self. This too is historically particular. In early modern Europe, mind and body were understood to be mingled, and this was a source of anxiety when it came to gestation. A ...”

“... categories that defined artistic practice in her lifetime. There was no widespread tradition of self-portraiture in 16th-century Italy, despite the fact, as Michael Cole writes, that it is often seen as a defining feature of Renaissance art. Sofonisba made more images of herself than any other artist in the century between Dürer and Rembrandt. These ...”

“... to dismantle their respectable lives, hide from their good fortune and ignore all instincts for self-preservation in the hope of attaining godliness – even sainthood. Miss Goering lives in a grand and beautiful home but decides that ‘in order to work out my own little idea of salvation … it is necessary for me to live in some more tawdry place.’ She ...”

“... there was no need for a socialist tradition to combat the right or to advance the interests of a self-aware proletariat. Instead all shades of opinion across the political spectrum subscribed unselfconsciously to the American Way of Life, which Hartz labelled ‘mass Lockeanism’. Locke, he insisted, ‘dominates American political thought, as no thinker ...”