“... as had Heinrich Jalowetz and Luigi Dallapiccola before him: Hans and I had published an article on Don Giovanni by Dallapiccola in Music Survey in December 1950, which had brought Jalowetz’s observation to our attention. One might argue about the prophetic dimension, but what is indisputable is the extraordinary intensity and compression of the music. It was ...”

“... Values Voter Summit, blames the allegations against Kavanaugh on the Fabian Society: ‘They don’t like what America is and what it represents, and they want to change us to another system. In order to do that, there are three things they must control: the education system, the media and the courts. The first two of those they have.’ But now they ...”

“... Cao’s is ultimately a tragedy, as his first modern critic, Wang Guowei, understood, even if we don’t possess the exact version Cao made of its ending.4 But the place of wit within it is not at all like the pockets of comic relief in Shakespearean tragedy. It is far larger and more defining. In David Hawkes’s translation of The Dream, an achievement ...”

“... had a camera, a bush hat and carried no weapon), introduced himself as an adviser and said: ‘Don’t forget to write about the ARVN! It’s their war, too!’ I said I would, and indeed did, prophetically: ‘It is on these little men in their oversize American helmets that the future of South Vietnam will ultimately depend.’ As a battle, Attleboro was ...”

“... She found her interactions with Lyttle challenging. ‘How come you have a small nose?’ ‘Jews don’t have blue eyes.’ On and on he went, trying to interrogate her on her sexual preferences. Russo recalled legends of lovers who descended into the depths to reclaim partners enraptured by the goddess of death. Now she was involved with a Celtic minotaur ...”

“... cities of the West. Some of the smartest and most well-meaning straight people still don’t get it – in fact, don’t even see it. This mole-blindness is all the more bizarre given the unremittingly vulgar sexual explicitness that otherwise assaults us everywhere in the mass media, not least in the cartoon ...”

“... House). I ask Miss S. how long she has had the van. ‘Since 1965,’ she says, ‘though don’t spread that around. I got it to put my things in. I came down from St Albans in it and plan to go back there eventually. I’m just pedalling water at the moment. I’ve always been in the transport line. Chiefly delivery and chauffeuring. You ...”

“... after his father’s death he wrote one of his great serious spoofs, ‘Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote’, a meditation, using a straight face and no ‘fine writing or purple patches’, on the idea of rewriting as an inspired enterprise, and on the concept of the writer as a force of culture imprisoned by language and time to such an extent that ...”

“... sitting room with the twinkling lights outside.‘You go to bed in the house that keeps you safe, don’t you?’ said Zainu Deen, the father of Zainab Deen, who lived in Flat 115 on the 14th floor with her son, Jeremiah. Everybody said that Zainab had always been independent: she left home at 18 and worked all the hours she could at the Chelsea and ...”