“... just one of their sacred texts by scholars who still confuse the place names and numbers that may also serve as exclamations of endearment with those that signify disgust.      * Ever since the cataclysmic civil war between al-Origbi and Philip twins have been both shunned and revered – for the drear month of penitence that follows their birth, for ...”

“... Reproduction of whatever you are absorbing with your five senses is forbidden, and may provoke nausea, insomnia, loss of balance or blurred vision: it were better you retire, and then attack, hurling weapons and imprecations at the diffident foe. The world averts its gaze, and unfortunate schemers drag their woes from home to muddy fields: all roads lead to rooms, as the Irish say, and to windows through which one stares at the seething clouds ...”

“... accountants, and bullies, Which sounds as if they won’t be much fun ... Though I dare say they may get to set up some gang-bangs after a bit, Involving privileged backstage foxes like the Queen, and Thatcher and Indira Gandhi, To keep everyone amused, and to try & keep something happening ... like the human race. This fandango is currently being hyped ...”

“... or couldn’t fancy down the feeling before dinner.Just halt there in the wind, as so often death may come upon one of these days caught by a note fired three timesthen resumed in front of his own attention, a life to be heldon the other side of the wound after things rigidly said,without saying which is such fun for all of that wavingin a burst of unsuitable ...”

“... but train dirty, that’s perfection, let’s rank and yank                there may be some hardship, sure, but we’ll be free                and the technical helpdesk thanks me for ‘reaching ...”

“... proud of, hick culture functionaries in this distant corner of Oceania. Stand-offish though she may have affected to be, I walked directly over to where she was standing and said, – Is the onion meant to discourage the plague of suitors who will be drawn like moths to the radiance of your beauty? She barely acknowledged that I was even there, turning her ...”

“... I flicked a pair of glittering ladybirds as they mated on the curled leaf of an apple tree, in ...”

“... or I have the capacity to imagine, resolving themselves into that one ‘sensitive chord’, which may one day come to be a text entitled ...”

“... blows a hole through, again blows, again with spite, again, until no more horn, none. * Corinna in May pushed a rus ty nail deep in the soil of her sick gardenia. All through the dark months leaftips curled. What buds appeared were sickly pale. As a consumptive heroine in winter light so fared and failed Corinna’s plant. In June, beside the burbling ...”

“... Took a turn or two across a plot of May, to where he saw wild thyme, some clustered oxlips, bunches of riviniana violets. And, the way Adam put it, their bodies seemed incorporate with their names. Cobwebs, sticky on cut fingers. Tongues caught up in the sweet lexemes. So, speaking leaves, he said: ‘Commend me to this Mistress Squash, your mother ...”

“... on the armof Abraham with his curled moustache (the swine:he’ll leave her, of course) we may inspect the drainpipe:not the authentic late-Victorian drainpipebut just where that one was, convincing proof(together with the gatepost and the windows)that this is it, all right: the very house –unless it’s not; unless that was a stand-in,one the ...”

“... we have to conclude that in many men and women this amounts to a definite choice. The choice may exist on an unconscious level, but nevertheless it is still there. Why some people but not others are obsessed with the survival of their species is a fascinating question. I would suggest that it may be that, in times like ...”

“... to mature in the British intelligence community. In a letter circulated to all chief constables in May 1934, MI5’s director general, Vernon Kell, explained that fascism was, to a great extent, ‘a natural reaction from communism’. This thesis, if something so underdeveloped can be called that, was widely shared in Whitehall. When Hugh Trevor-Roper joined ...”

“... call him an artist. This suggestion, under the rapid wit of the dialogue and the scene shifts, may have done most to compel the admiration of the first grateful viewers of Citizen Kane. Welles’s own ‘presence in the picture’, Otis Ferguson wrote, ‘is always a vital thing, an object of fascination to the beholder. In fact, without him the picture ...”

“... who held a social rank and position higher than it really was. This, in the England of 1895, may almost have been seen as a more serious accusation. But Wilde came from a long tradition of Irishmen who had created themselves in London. He was an artist, he moved freely in society, often using an English accent. He had been to Oxford. He invented himself ...”