“... is necessary both to understand and to prosecute a certain culture of wrongdoing. And you may have noticed that those who are too quick to shout ‘conspiracy theorist’ are equally swift, when consequences for authority and consensus impend, to look serious and say: ‘It’s more complicated than that.’ These have become standard damage-control ...”

“... you abandoned; this will perpetuate a sense of belonging in absence without being threatening; it may even allow you to become the centre of a small community of your own; suitable candidates for this role would be an admiring younger brother, or a young and loving wife whose humble social background and limited education guarantee that she will always be ...”

“... as being ‘as big as a pigeon’s egg’, something else which like the banana I had never seen.3 May. A distressing call today from Dr C., the oncologist who looked after my friend Anne during her last illness. He talks about hospital services being deliberately run down and the difficulties of ward care due to shortage of staff but it’s only gradually I ...”

“... just saying things as they come into one’s head. I cant catch him off his guard. But thats, it may be, because he writes so well.’ Reading Virginia Woolf’s own letters from the period 1932-35 gives much the same impression. It is as if the very freedom and fluency with which she writes allow her to evade intimacy, to protect herself from deeper and ...”

“... attack on the vehicles carrying World Central Kitchen staff on 1 April 2024, which killed seven, may plausibly be called an error. Yet it’s hard to believe that the killing of so many aid workers is the result of a series of regrettable mistakes, any more than that of medical staff – 1054 killed according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health – or journalists ...”

“... Revisiting​ old haunts is a hazardous pastime. The beloved buildings may look smaller or shabbier, the unforgettable view is ruined by the new solar farm, the once fascinating characters in the novel have lost their power to enchant, everything seems blurred or – the verdict from which there is no appeal – dated ...”

“... were to ask how he came by such detail, one possible answer is that he made it up. As this episode may suggest, the author of this book is the omniscient narrator personified, a participant-observer in every drama. Thus when the young Raymond, a lad of 11 or 12, rushes out onto the hills, Fred lumbers after him, noting the way the bracken bends and breaks ...”

“... Witnessing the giving of offence, like being part of the audience for someone else’s humour, may have its enjoyment, but, tellingly, the real champions of comic abuse don’t much care for this secondary role, and this points to another dimension of the pleasure involved: it’s a way of performing, attracting attention, showing off, a form of the will ...”

“... portrait of Phaedra was ‘free from grosser traits; and if that is so, her infatuation may have been excused as the consequence of her husband’s desertion, who had abandoned her to assist his friend in a hopeless expedition.’ Sophocles’ Cretan women can be ‘excused’, are not ‘gross’. So what is or was it about Euripides that made ...”

“... be). One of the things you might have to discover is that some virtues are against the grain: it may not feel real to you to say sorry, or to be grateful, for example.The upshot of all this is that adults who look after adolescents have both to want them to behave badly, and to try and stop them; and to be able to do this the adults have to enjoy having ...”

“... was it his hand or Salim’s that lost hold of her as she was running for the train? – and he may have turned this regret into what he regards as the love of his life. He certainly wants to marry her, and surely just not for old times’ sake. She tries to leave the gangster and go away with Jamal but is caught at the railway station and slashed across ...”

“... that it would take her 90 minutes to drive to the hospital: would I still be alive then? ‘He may – or may not be. He’s very, very critical.’ They had amputated the toes on my left foot and then, when the leg continued to swell, amputated my leg at the knee. But the poison had already invaded other parts of my ...”

“... to mean infinite amounts of money to do what you like with over an infinite amount of time. It may be that everything that follows from his getting the grant is a dream – it may be that his getting the award is a dream – but it scarcely matters, since this is a dream he never leaves, and we never see its outside. His ...”

“... blanket statement about Penelope, that ‘no modern reader can find her emotionally plausible,’ may be based on notions of what a right-thinking liberated woman is supposed to feel. As she goes on to document, feminist rewritings and critical studies of Penelope have tried to fill in the gaps that Homer leaves in a character about whom we are supposed to ...”

“... left in the diplomatic tank.’ But what could you do? ‘Iraq was a total basket case.’ That may seem a sweeping assessment, but Blair has probably travelled further, and to more countries, than anyone among his contemporaries. ‘I completely fell in love with Córdoba,’ he records, ‘a beautiful place.’ The Vatican is ‘grand beyond ...”