“... one do with a suggestion? One throws it out. For what does one throw a suggestion out? For what it may be worth. In one of his last columns, published in March 1966, O’Brien looked back on his catechism, compiled more than twenty years earlier, and described it as ‘an exegetic survey of the English language in its extremity of logo-daedalate ...”

“... Take the path to reach common richnessD. Vigorously develop social productivityMany candidates may be tempted to choose A. After all, ‘strengthen the CCP’s leadership’ is the correct answer to most questions. Some candidates may choose C, because Deng Xiaoping said ‘to be a socialist doesn’t mean you have to be ...”

“... mustn’t come about as the result of an accident, but must involve fate or providence, which may in turn require the presence of numinous powers. W.B. Yeats could see nothing tragic about a car crash. Pure contingency – falling drunkenly from a fifth-floor window, for example – lacks the grandeur of the tragic. The protagonist must be of high social ...”

“... of the kilogram, it couldn’t lose weight: the universe could only get heavier.) As of last May, the definition of a kilogram is based on Planck’s constant. Metrologists say that by excising the last physical vestige of the SI, they’ve fulfilled the dream of the savants and finally created an immaterial, universal basis for all metrology. But they ...”

“... level. The idea, then, is that by changing the behaviour observed in a person’s handwriting, it may be possible to change other things about that person.This is the first of a series of ‘exercises’, small practice compositions – self-referential and encouraging, like this: ‘Now I’m trying to do three things: (1) keep the letters to a suitable ...”

“... to praise in Giacometti’s work; his evocation of a generic ‘man’, straitened and distended, may even have given Ponge the idea that he could start again, learning from Giacometti how to whittle this enormous subject down to within a millimetre of its armature. Yet in his notes for the essay, published in the 1960s, we see Ponge circling round the work ...”

“... Whenever there is a breakthrough in genetic engineering, there are inevitably fears that it may be used irresponsibly in human reproduction. The nature of the arguments hasn’t been changed by CRISPR, but it’s more urgent that we address them. Doudna has thought about the issues, but it isn’t clear that she goes beyond paying lip service to some of ...”

“... Ian’s father, went to Eton and Oxford, became a Tory MP, and died a hero on the battlefield in May 1917. Val had two sons, the elder of whom, Peter, b. 1907, inherited the tendency to be a paragon, and the younger of whom, Ian, b. 1908, inevitably became the family handful. Things were not helped by the wills of Val and Robert, which absent-mindedly or ...”

“... trade unionism. Scotland’s extraordinarily narrow and corrupt electoral system prior to 1832 may have encouraged some Scottish proconsuls like Thomas Maitland, Governor of Malta and the Ionian Islands, to take a particularly dim and manipulative view of colonial assemblies. Scotland’s churches produced distinctive forms of missionary activity, while ...”

“... other texts to interpret it. But the effort of interpretation creates a weight of expectation that may prove intolerable, and stuffing such big claims as ‘Ulyssean’ into such a thin book – as the dust jacket does – might make it burst. In the Babel Dark sections, Winterson allows herself to tell, in part, an old-fashioned love story (while Silver’s ...”

“... Humvees carry placards in Arabic and English warning drivers to stay 100 metres away or they may open fire. They don’t explain how anybody can keep their distance in the crowded traffic of central Baghdad. Iraqis spend their days watching for hidden dangers. As I came in from the airport on the main highway I had my eye on a car near me that was about ...”

“... molecules into a lattice ensures the crystal’s solidity and also its beauty: carbon atoms may organise themselves into diamond, or into soot. In a solid, the individual atoms are locked in place relative to one another, but a rise in temperature causes them to jiggle a bit so that each is slightly displaced. The positional ‘errors’ do not ...”

“... breasts sticking out to here. Fascinating as these speculations are, at least to me, they may appear to stray beyond the limits of a review of this book. (I also regard oral sex, made fashionably respectable in the Sixties by Updike and Roth, as a compromise with unadmitted homosexual drives – remember Mordecai Richler’s hero, dreaming on his bed ...”

“... an inadequate destination for a novel on this scale. A novel from East Germany, whatever else it may be, is necessarily read as a report: and for the great majority of Westerners, a report on a virtually unknown world. Judged by internal evidence, Stefan Heym’s Collin makes a strong impression of authenticity. It has been hailed in West Germany as the best ...”

“... This would seem to be justification enough for Stern’s general remarks. But the actual letter may not quite bear out his interpretation. Kafka writes: He [the rabbi] inspects everything, but especially the buildings; the most obscure trivialities interest him. He asks questions, points out all sorts of things. His whole demeanour is marked by admiration ...”