“... not, in fact, own the ‘facts’ of his life, or of Plath’s: some of us might be said to be self-possessed, but none of us is in full possession of facts about ourselves beyond our reported date of birth, and – if we’re lucky – our parentage. In an essay in 1967 Hughes stated that ‘the struggle truly to possess his own experience, in other words ...”

“... Safe as houses and translating freely, though completely lacking Heaney’s subtle self-recognitions, his response was lofty: ‘Comprehension.’ Then, perhaps aware of the self-serving in adequacy of the answer to someone he was using as informant/subject, he added: ‘and money.’ There was no possible ...”

“... remarkable,’ said the Telegraph of Out, and Punch thought that the author was so sure of her new self that she must belong to the school of Samuel Beckett. In Remake it’s this wise child she celebrates, and indeed she mischievously cites – from Jenny Diski writing in the London Review of Books, as it happens – a witty mock-theory about the ‘crucial ...”

“... Michael Fried, who is also a poet, has a dense, self-questioning, fervent prose style. Somewhat perversely he has, over the last three decades – that is, since his doctoral dissertation on Manet was printed as a special issue of Artforum in 1969 – put this prose to the service of art-historical scholarship. It might have been otherwise ...”

“... the evil – and, traditionally, the guilt – of rape is turned inward, but borne by some other self which is not the true self. She thinks that multiple-identity stories that deal not with splitting but with masquerading – having more than one self at one’s conscious disposal ...”

“... is part of what is meant by calling him ‘transcendent’), so the work of art is mysteriously self-generating and self-dependent, conjuring itself up miraculously out of sheer nothingness, obedient to no law but that of its own unique being. As a concrete universal, it is as much a coupling of sense and spirit, time and ...”

“... as wholly and irrefutably obvious. A better title might have been How These Truths Became Self-Evident, because that is the problem that actually concerns her (she starts with Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence). As she notes, between 1689, when the Bill of Rights spoke only of the particular rights of Englishmen, and 1776, when Jefferson ...”

“... taste for the sublime is a greed like any other.’ But the occasional mockery she makes of her self-consciously self-forgetting absorptions seems mere stylistic dither and does not touch her essential seriousness. Though her reader may flip ahead, may put down the book and forget where she left off, may allow herself to ...”

“... by mouth’. During police questioning, Eric comes under suspicion: the cops mistake his self-loathing for guilt. In scenes told almost entirely in (often very funny) dialogue, he doesn’t help himself by being unable to disguise how much he despised the victim: ‘Sometimes it feels like everybody I know down here went to the same fucking art camp ...”

“... polite society accepted the open-mouthed smile. Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun’s ‘Self-Portrait with Her Daughter Julie’ (1786). Wariness of the laugh (le rire) among classical and religious authorities had cast a shadow of disapproval over its diminutive, the smile (le sourire). Aristotle may have noted that laughing distinguished mankind ...”

“... their lives, and objective analysis often takes second place to the resurrected details (revealing self-made success, lost grandeur, anti-authoritarian spirit or helpless victimhood) that best confirm the values of the investigator. Trained historians observe, sometimes disdainfully, that such researchers are looking for archival comfort food. The two breeds ...”

“... are plain-living, selfless and even saintly, while others are envious, untrustworthy and self-seeking. Some anti-egalitarians are greedy, complacent and callous, while others are open-handed, fair-minded and genuinely committed to the well-being of their dependants and subordinates. But that commonplace observation is no help in the quest for a ...”

“... that Church doctrine and social custom imposed on sexuality drew especially vigorous criticism. Self-proclaimed libertines rejected constraints on premarital virginity and conjugal fidelity, heterosexuality and monogamy, chastity in women and chivalry in men. Evolving from the mid-century contributions of Diderot and Crébillon fils, libertine fiction ...”

“... and the schizophrenia disproportionately experienced by the area’s migrants. Migration is a self-splitting, one note observes; it’s ‘psychotic to live in a different country for ever’. In 2012, Kapil returned to the UK and lay down near the house in Lansbury Drive, Hayes, where she grew up. From pavement level, she could sense the weird electric ...”

“... recourse to the I Ching and interviews with friends who are mothers.The ceaseless metaphysical self-inquiry of Heti’s books is a maddening, but accurate, depiction of a world in which one cannot boil an egg or clean a toilet or get married without wondering whether there might be a more optimal way of doing it explained in a video on the internet. Heti ...”