“... behind it, and with, what we need, more love than the other buildings, however sanctioned they may be under the latest laws. Within 15 years of McGahern’s essay, the power of the Church in Ireland has been fatally undermined. A number of reports into the abuse of children by members of the Catholic clergy have found that such abuse was widespread, at ...”

“... obsession – the gorgeous, disorienting, sometimes repellent phenomenon known as outsider art. It may be that anything in which one becomes absorbed produces its ready share of ambivalence: that objects of fixation trouble as much as they arouse. Certainly, that would seem to be true in my case. Strange fits of passion have I known – a carload of them ...”

“... spared the worst effects of winter. But, as with depopulation, we are getting a glimpse of what may be to come. South Korea serves as a demographic warning to the rest of the world, in the way that, say, the Maldives does for climate change. These are the places where we can see what will happen if and when the waters close over our heads.Depopulation is at ...”

“... issue the call to prayer. ‘Once you scrutinise you will always find something, however small it may be,’ the anonymous author of the Trojan Horse letter wrote. ‘By that time the damage is done.’ Michael Gove had already vented his views on sinister Islamic plots in 2006, in his book Celsius 7/7: ‘There are many Muslims across the globe, within ...”

“... choking alone. The reader’s urge to rerun the story in order to repair the intolerable injustice may be embarrassing and damaging too.Racing ahead of other threats – including syphilis, the mercury that Keats had prescribed himself to treat the syphilis, and the extreme anxiety caused by the mercury – tuberculosis was destroying Keats. His doctors (some ...”

“... is Life!’ you keep telling us. So if we cook it right, that is, with care, and luck, it may give us all a taste for truth. At last you’re silent, intently dozing on the wing. They will not forget you, your friends on the island here (it’s just a small place, far off in Europe, remember ... no longer of any great consequence); and won’t forget ...”

“... defects-invisible,shining in the eyes’ charm, the paternal loveand fidelity charm, the song of may-he-know-you-for-his-own,and most of all the beloved, be calm; you are safe, you are mine.We’d know these songs in whatever language they were sung.She wouldn’t put the infant down, kept tuckingthe cloths in round his head. No good.He rarely showed an ...”

“... why would man ‘A’ be a Manet, And man ‘B’ be a Monet, manner and all? Manet and Monet may be nothing but manners, But what manners! What Monets! What need there be more? What’s money? What’s Manet? It’s Manets that matter: The way that their matter is made to have meaning, Manually, maddeningly, matter-of-factly. What matters is ...”

“... is fast receding into the dark Back of time. My father (born October, 1934, died The last day of May, 2007) kept his medal in a safe Cleverly hidden in the utility room. The institutions that formed him, bade him don A tin hat at Suez, shimmer like elegant, gauzy backdrops Floating down from the flies. He wept Rarely, ate powdered egg through gritted teeth ...”

“... of further questions or second trips. Between the lines of your unyielding story another narrative may awaken and begin to stand up. And that will be the story you take home: the unending story of the story itself. You’d do well to snap your pencil and walk away at that point. Exhaustion can be a wise counsellor. But sometimes the second story not only ...”

“... General Smith’s book speaks of CNN fighting, rather than merely reporting, the war. Indeed, this may well be the first time a major American television news network has so openly collaborated with the propaganda machine of the US military. Peter Arnett, it seems clear in retrospect, was mainly useful as a way of creating the illusion of controversy and ...”

“... American edition inscribed by her mother in black ink: ‘Edna Fischel, April 1900’, or ‘May 1900’ – she seems to have accumulated them as they appeared, the name and location of the publishers changing midway through the edition. A couple of the volumes are underlined and annotated in Martha’s hand. She probably read them during the ...”

“... away, but finessed for a world beyond the raucous, claustrophobic clubs they were used to. This may be the moment subculture jettisoned its prefix, and began to infiltrate the culture at large.The jacket covers of two of these new Beatles books feature the classic mid-1960s Fab Four: no longer buttoned up inside matching suits, but individually tailored in ...”

“... experiencing old age and bodily decline (‘Diabetes is now affecting both eyes, though what this may symbolise I can’t say’). And for a lot of the time it is a poem preoccupied with poetry: there are numerous one-line aphoristic definitions of ‘poem’ throughout, both weighty (‘Poem as cradle of the unbiddable name’) and flighty (‘Poem as equity ...”

“... most reliable independent experts, ‘the most credible worst-case estimate’ is that the North may have between 6.3 and 8.5 kg of reprocessed plutonium. In other words, the CIA’s educated guess, endlessly repeated in the media, appears to have been mistaken. A less obvious consequence of this mistake has been its role in strengthening the North’s ...”