“... ancient memories of persecution; both invoke a sense of solitude and existential vulnerability, a self-image that confounds (and often outrages) their far more vulnerable neighbours. When Iran was ruled by the shah, the countries were allies. But in his last years in power, he became increasingly frustrated by Israel’s expansionism and arrogance, warning of ...”

“... selfies and posting videos of the pope as he goes. This all seems in order to me. If my current self were here, perhaps I would be streaking down the aisle screaming FIGHT THE REAL ENEMY and CATS HAVE SOULS! But that’s never been my method. I streak around later. I have a brief moment of panic. Is it wrong to meet the pope? Then: if Martin Scorsese did ...”

“... I got an email from a Los Angeles lawyer called Jimmy Nguyen, from the firm Davis Wright Tremaine (self-described as ‘a one-stop shop for companies in entertainment, technology, advertising, sports and other industries’). Nguyen told me that they were looking to contract me to write the life of Satoshi Nakamoto. ‘My client has acquired life story rights ...”

“... she is invoking the words and rhythms of the Russian Church, and this seems to purge of all self-consciousness the fact that she is talking about herself, her predicament and anguish. At the crucifixion Mary Magdalen sobbed; John, the beloved disciple, stood ‘with face like stone’. ‘Nobody looked into the silent mother’s eyes, nobody ...”

“... to the body of commentaries produced by both their devotees and their critics, and contain as many self-deconstructing texts as ‘totalising’ ones. And while granting that canons do embody ‘traditions’, he points out that, without some equivalent of the notion of tradition, there would be no need for ‘the special forms of attention elicited by ...”

“... something to be a fact, there is an entire apparatus at their disposal for proving it to be so: self-seeking accusers, suggestible or imaginative witnesses, broken suspects, the power to give credit to what supports the hypothesis and to rubbish what controverts it. Our adversarial system of criminal justice has a mass of safeguards against the technical ...”

“... assertions remain suggestive and fecund: ‘Reynolds’s imagination lost some of its freedom and self-assurance when it ascended from the intermediate to the grand style. As long as he was translating the sublime into the fashionable, he was inventive and sure of his ground: when he reversed the process and attempted to raise the fashionable into the ...”

“... on my part. Read now, her article expresses something of the exasperation I feel myself at this self-indulgent young woman who knew better than her elders and cared so little about other people’s lives. But then I am now older than Betty Miller was when she wrote the piece. It also needs to be said that a very few weeks after that telephone call I was ...”

“... people were on the wane, though this as yet entailed no conspicuous deterioration, and no loss of self-assurance. Mark Bence-Jones starts with Irish hunting, and makes of it a daredevil and jovial business; next comes the sporty slaughter of many woodcock and pheasants. The Irish aristocracy acts true to type in this study, down to the display of ...”

“... half-grotesque urban types, their incisive characterisation. Richardson concedes that Picasso’s self-portrait in pen and watercolour of 1899 is inspired by the Beggarstaff Brothers but not that it is their influence which makes his spectacular series of portraits in charcoal and pastel of that year so much bolder and more memorable than those by Casas with ...”

“... and other bodies in order to build a wider psychoanalytic culture. As Steiner points out, the self-scrutiny to which Klein incited her colleagues, some of whom were mourning the double loss of Freud and their native country, ‘involved not only neurotic but also psychotic anxieties’, and it is no diminution of the achievement of the British Society to ...”

“... status-graded civic culture. At the most basic level, it even obstructed elementary self-protection: thus the Callaghan Government was so immobilised that it could not contemplate the one thing which might have perpetuated it – electoral reform. Yet historically this omission is less indefensible than it seems. In the first place, the ...”

“... vigilant anger. If you wish to enjoy this anthology as it should be enjoyed, you should ignore the self-serving introduction, with its unconvincing protestations. ‘I have no wish to sentimentalise orality, only to ...’ Really, no wish? Quite sure you don’t have just a teeny such wish? But then a good anthology is more magnanimous and wise than anything ...”

“... word. Maly was executed in the purges of the late Thirties along with many other KGB agents – self-blinded idealists and clear-eyed brutes alike. The Magnificent Five, who in the Forties and early Fifties provided their masters with vast quantities of material, lived to see the KGB dilute the intelligence their thousands of foreign agents pumped back with ...”

“... who have had opinions on the future as well as the past of architecture. The emulating eye may be self-serving and envious, but it is also challenging and competitive. Goy and Berger, because they are more disinterested, are also less interested in the look of the buildings they deal with. Sometimes they seem downright indifferent. Both use (among other ...”