“... spa town, Pechorin befriends a like-minded doctor called Werner. The two men, Pechorin thinks with self-satisfaction, share a cold egotism: ‘Sad things are funny to us. Funny things are sad to us. And in general, to tell the truth, we are indifferent to everything apart from our selves.’ Pechorin delights in destroying the weak illusions of this ...”

“... and frequently nodding off mid-sentence, only to rouse himself for a renewed bout of defiance and self-pity before slumping back again. Branch leaves him still talking to himself, and wonders if the president is suffering from narcolepsy, or something worse. Through all this, a clear picture of Clinton’s passions and priorities emerges. The things he loves ...”

“... to 9/11, sanctioned by international law and a broad coalition; the objectives were those of self-defence and altruism. Al-Qaida has killed and continues to try to kill innocent citizens, and it is right to prevent them. It is also right to defeat the Taliban, to bring development and an effective legitimate state to Afghanistan, and to stabilise ...”

“... rights derive from violence, all ownership from appropriation or robbery’. The economy was a self-generating, self-correcting system which owed nothing to government or to conscious design, and at its best depended on the unfettered play of the energies and appetites of men. Hayek modified this alarming thesis, but he ...”

“... his bid to build a $2.6 billion high-speed rail link between Orlando and Tampa was based on his self-proclaimed reputation as the man who rescued Britain’s railways; when he pitched for rail business in India he said: ‘I have the experience to upgrade a crumbling network. In Britain we took over a dilapidated part of the network about 15 years ago and ...”

“... into the world. Earlier he laments ‘that whole sombre thing called reflection’, in which the self becomes its own object of relentless scrutiny and self-punishment. If one wants to keep a promise, one must burn memory into the will, submit to – or submit oneself to – a reign of terror in the name of ...”

“... as irrational and inferior beings. Gaily agreeing that the chief female virtues are meekness and self-effacement, they managed estates, signed off accounts, bought wardships and brokered marriage settlements, all the while keeping up a steady output of needlework. In some cases, they conspired against the crown while claiming, if it went badly, that their ...”

“... said Garden Room there’s a further gauntlet of aides to negotiate and a strange act of ritual self-abnegation to be performed. The Likely Nominee (Maybe) stands about twenty feet in from the door; we can see her in action at the centre of the room, busy posing with acolytes. To approach her, however, one has to execute a kind of involuntary ...”

“... of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (‘You might be wondering why I’m here’). There was the self-styled ‘hunter and redneck’ from the Louisiana bayou reality show Duck Dynasty and the former teen star of a 1970s television comedy – noticed by Trump for tweeting that Hillary Clinton is a ‘cunt’ – who called Obama ‘a Muslim or a Muslim ...”

“... and secret, so empty and alive, so unreal and familiar, so private and noisy’ – reads like a self-diagnosis. In 1954, aged 37, Brennan married St Clair McKelway, formerly the New Yorker’s managing editor, an ex-pilot and manic depressive who was fond of women and drink. Maxwell wrote that ‘it may not have been the worst of all possible marriages, but ...”

“... held its ground so successfully that it was able, ultimately, to transform Buddhism from a self-centred faith into a doctrine of brotherhood, dedicated to good works and open to lay believers (including women). It also managed to convert Daoism, with its critiques of organised ritual, into another bureaucratised religion.The early eighth century, five ...”

“... future. Not ‘When was Germany?’ but ‘When will Germany be?’If ‘Germany’ was a Hegelian self-realising subject, ascending from mere ‘phenomenal’ particularity to a destined universality, what sort of statehood should it attain? Clearly, a precondition for the true Germany was something like unity. The patchwork of principalities must melt into ...”

“... a strong impression, which I tried to catch in a diary I kept back then:A thin, nervous woman, self-protective in manner – legs tightly crossed, arms hugging herself, down and back in her chair as if trying to shrink behind a cushion. Her voice was quiet, words deliberate. Occasional panic seemed to sweep over her and she would violently begin to spin a ...”

“... contract, effectively a bond, was the source of Michael’s later problems with Sony. In his ‘self-portrait’ film, Freedom Uncut (first released in 2017), he says:The deal that I was working from [at Sony] was based on the deal that I had signed with Andrew under duress … The head of the record company [Mark Dean of Innervision] turns up with these ...”

“... received a hand-delivered letter from the Gestapo that accused her of offending ‘national self-respect’, rendering them unable to extend a ‘further right of hospitality’. The international press corps saw her off at the train station the next morning, her arms full of the roses they had given her. By the time she got back to the US, Thompson had ...”