“... a year or two, solely by making certain adjustments (as he once explained to me) to his inner self.’ I remembered how Johannes learned ancient Greek, then classical Hebrew and Akkadian: a quick read through the grammar (not quite without teaching aids), then hours and hours and days and months and years reading through the extant texts, muttering ...”

“... When he is about to die by plunging his short sword into his stomach, he attempts a brave bit of self-deprecation, the grim farewell with the light touch. ‘I have always envied Rufio his long arms,’ he says. A tight smile appears on his face, so we know he knows what the effect is supposed to be. The effect isn’t there though. He’s been whinging ...”

“... historic suffering. There are moments in his early work when his shoulders seem to sag under the self-imposed strain. Take, for example, the title poem of Dancing in Odessa: ‘My grandfathers fought/the German tanks on tractors, I kept a suitcase full/of Brodsky’s poems.’ Are the two acts moral equivalents, or is keeping the suitcase a miniaturised ...”

“... didn’t believe it. The white bread was an indicator. Some history there. I’ve generally been a self-heeding person. I don’t even see the situation of others until long after, for instance when writing it down – look, even now, it’s only because I’ve got to that point in the white bread thesis where I’m glancing around for grips.Once Conrad shot ...”

“... put it right. There is something admirable about our imperfect legal system that has shown enough self-confidence to admit and put right its own ...”

“... of reach. Human-like automata are intriguing because they raise questions about how much of our self-determining nature is caused by automatic processes. But it is the fact of movement that I find most interesting. When a leaf flies past the side of our vision, it looks like a bird; when a ball rolls along the floor we think it is a mouse. Purposeful ...”

“... responsibility for their own lives. Moreover, as Mitt makes clear on the Mouse Mouth video, these self-proclaimed ‘victims’ elected Obama because they knew he would take care of his own and keep the free money flowing. The 47 per cent, Mitt says, ‘will vote for the president no matter what’. And he adds: ‘If the Hispanic voting bloc becomes as ...”

“... your insides.’ So the league continued, though numbers dwindled as fans took it on themselves to self-isolate. A few clubs, including the reigning champions, Dinamo Brest, began using cardboard cut-out fans to make the stands look full for the TV cameras. (This has backfired in Australia, where a similar initiative has been hijacked by fans sending joke ...”

“... houses. When corruption hits the rich the poor soon join in. I despise those women who talk self-control while they’re burning hot on the inside. Aphrodite! how can such a wife look into her husband’s face without fear? What if the darkness, her accomplice – what if the very rooms of her house began to speak? For me now, ladies, death is the ...”

“... they drink. She is four years old, and that is the only unconvincing thing about her: in her calm self-sufficiency she seems more like a sophisticated eight or nine-year-old, perfectly at ease in grown-up company, and with no problems about getting herself dressed or going to the lavatory. But apart from that implausibility, she is a delightfully achieved and ...”

“... that may be because he is so very keen to put across his message, that what we all need is self-knowledge, humility and forgiveness. The first quality is preached by a wise psychiatrist (they are quite rare in fiction), and the other two by a Catholic priest, Father Kostka; he has no part in the story, but pops up occasionally as a patient in ...”

“... in Laurencin’s work, and femininity its primary theme. In Woman with a Fan (1912), a probable self-portrait, she rhymes the twisted coil of her braid with the unfolding pleats of a fan and the sloping curves of shoulder, neck and breast. Pablo Picasso and Jean Metzinger had both painted several pictures of women with fans in the preceding ...”

“... voice extra attention. She was said to prefer it, but it was set aside in favour of something more self-conscious.The album opens with the title track, about the Baader-Meinhof Group. The first thing you hear is a squiggle of synth. Reynolds brought in Steve Winwood – whose musical career stretches from the Spencer Davis Group and Traffic in the 1960s to the ...”

“... with him and a stroll with him, a letter from his wife (the slavishly devoted Mme Émilie Teste, self-professed ‘plaything of a muscular knowledge’, who reminds me of a story about Wallace Stevens, once asked by a rather forward interviewer what his wife was called, and saying in surprise ‘Mrs Stevens’), a letter to him from an unnamed friend, a ...”

“... appear to be a step that should be taken unilaterally and might be undertaken out of enlightened self-interest by the military. But one cannot rely on that. And there is always a risk that these weapons may come to be regarded as bargaining chips, not to be moved until some progress is made in the negotiations over intermediate-range nuclear weapons, where ...”