“... over every opinion, leaving a desolating sense that they are all equally prejudiced, naive or self-serving. Judges, barristers, liberal critics, pornographers and poets are all put in what Sutherland presumably regards as their place, though it is not at all clear where those places are. It would be ungracious of me not to mention that one exception is ...”

“... Alf me and Groge in own bed Edie Pege other Wilf in box 2 dreams. firs i saw the devel SATAN him Self: with a Spike face Alf he sade Alf i Try onlie a Small pip of er to week it hapend a gane Thes pesil is no good wobley * its all rite pece full ixep the Tee vie rubige 100 Yers the done no * wher Edie Tech to fly its esie Like Thes She holed my hand and ...”

“... and then forget them.’ He appears to have missed the arrogance of the verb ‘use’ and the self-importance of thus imposing upon thousands what was once confined to a single unfortunate correspondent. Professors, it seems, are no more impervious than anyone else to the intoxicating vanity inspired by the ‘mass media’. I suspect that Eco may have ...”

“... of psychologists. Good actors are, so far as their craft is concerned, exacting, fastidious, self-aware and very hard-working. For most of this book one is overcome by an urge to find irony where none is intended. Much of my response might well be put down to an English suspicion of the translation of a familiar process into the language of American ...”

“... pragmatist; Tymoshenko, the imprisoned former prime minister of Ukraine, is emotional, self-dramatising, glamorous, Eva Perón in peasant braids. Her supporters have taken to holding up a picture of her head growing out of a field of wheat, a version of the blue (for sky) and yellow (for fields of grain) Ukrainian flag in which Tymoshenko’s face ...”

“... from the stereotype that had become familiar – a threatening austerity relieved at times by a self-conscious cheerfulness. There seemed to loom from his talk that afternoon what were to be the qualities of his later ‘Age of’ books: a command of detail and of scope, of structure and of sweep. There were choice, past-piercing details like the one he was ...”

“... done them something of a favour. Observers with a sense of history have noted that the tabloids’ self-justification, advanced in the name of press freedom, mirrors that of the authoritarian state. The Sun columnist Jane Moore admonishes errant public figures: ‘If you don’t want your private life splashed all over the papers, then behave ...”

“... 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 ...”