“... of turbulence and discord’. The partners ‘repeatedly erred on the side of distance and self-containment’, and the match was inevitably doomed. In ‘the better phases of the Polish-Jewish experiment’, in happier moments of ‘genuine fraternity’, in periods when ‘the streets of Poland’s cities and the paths of its shtetls did not seethe ...”

“... or tried to: but then there is something that is English about Kafka, and it is not only his self-deprecation. A vegetarian and fond of the sun, he seems a familiar crank; if he’d been living in England at the turn of the century, and not in Prague, one can imagine him going out hiking and spending evenings with like-minded friends in Letchworth. He is ...”

“... lebensraum, exemption. They rely on skills which are no longer openly desirable at home – rugged self-reliance and bush warfare – and live in accordance with a tribal mythology that other Afrikaners, the real volk who cannot accompany them, are obliged to set aside. Unlike their forbears, the EO trekkers can return every few weeks to the spouse and ...”

“... the Sixties, no country, whatever the system, was an island. Even though France and Britain were self-sufficient in whole blood and committed to voluntary, unpaid donation, both countries bought blood products in an international market dominated by multinational, mostly US-based companies. Whole blood was banked and credits were traded within ...”

“... rebelled against the German-dominated tastes of the Petersburg Conservatory and developed a self-conscious Russian style, incorporating ‘what they heard in village songs, in Cossack and Caucasian dances, in church chants and . . . in the tolling of church bells’. The Moscow Opera grew out of this revolt; so did Stanislavsky’s Moscow Art ...”

“... of passage and perhaps because their common sense exists in inverse proportion to their sense of self-importance. By the time I arrive in court, hit as I enter by the smell of floor polish, on the one hand, and dope seeping through the skin, on the other, lawyers and punters are already milling around the waiting area. I have been to see the prosecutor in ...”

“... at the last worry, the greatest, that in all the wagons west and pioneering, in all the strenuous self-dramatisation of being American, maybe nothing matters, maybe there is no meaning. What was it that didn’t matter? There was a small cemetery outside Sacramento that had once belonged to the family. Over the years, it had fallen into disrepair; monuments ...”

“... computation of time, without any populist exhibitionism, if anything with a certain retrospective self-irony.’ His politics were Marxist and anti-Stalinist; critical too – this was much rarer on the Far Left in Italy – of Maoism.Timpanaro’s political commitments informed and transformed his work. Technically speaking, what happened was that he widened ...”

“... in order to provide a way in to his other services. Conte emerges from this book as an obsessive self-publicist with a limited grip on reality; but it is also clear that this was part of his appeal. His willingness to promote anything, including his own brands of snake oil, was invaluable to his clients, who were later able to claim that they were merely ...”

“... a version of that unclothed imagination. Hazlitt also praises Bloomfield as an ‘ingenious and self-taught’ poet, whose verse is distinguished for ‘delicacy, fruitfulness and naivety’. This primitivism is cherished by Clare, but alongside it is the anxiety that because the ploughman’s shoe fits him, he will be seen as for ever plodding ...”

“... for them, must be set in a broader historical and geographical context: namely the state and self-image of the nation in which the concerts have taken place almost uninterruptedly for a century and more. For the imperial Britain in which Henry Wood’s Proms began in the summer of 1895 was a very different place from the post-imperial Britain in which ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... they wouldn’t notice if they burned themselves on a hot stove. Towering in their intellect and self-esteem, blunt bangs on a perfect brain, long legs in tarty skirts, don’t care, don’t care. Marvellous, funny, in a way that Byatt purported to be afraid to be. Delivered straight out of the voice, disarming. ‘Literary people are death, I should ...”

“... on their direction. Here’s a way to think about it: you live in a community that is entirely self-sufficient but produces one cash crop a year, consisting of a hundred crates of mangoes. In advance of the harvest, because it’s helpful for you to get the money now and not later, you sell the future ownership of the mango crop to a broker, for a dollar a ...”

“... 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 ...”