“... for searching in the archives for those who have been overlooked. Social and cultural historians may recoil from this, but it seems reasonable to read O’Brien’s self-confessed ‘elitism’ as a response to the prejudices of his peers. This book is a rebuke to those who doubt the existence of ‘clever people’ in the South, either in the antebellum ...”

“... will now answer the ultimate moral question: what, finally, do we live by? And though the answer may come only in sporadic flashes known as epiphanies, heard between two waves, in the ominous echo of an Indian cave, in the moment in the rose garden or in a sudden shout in the street, it can scarcely be claimed by the more conventionally religious that the ...”

“... seem laziness itself.’ Leonardo’s belief in the inevitability of pictorial self-exposure may explain why no self-portrait by him is recorded, as well as the reason for his difficulties in completing work. He was searching neurotically for a perfection beyond personal idiosyncrasy. He wouldn’t have approved of a recent contention that the Mona Lisa ...”

“... His last words are supposed to have been ‘Ah well, I suppose it has come to this,’ though he may have said, as he does, ‘in a low tone’, on the last page of Carey’s novel: ‘Such is life.’ To his supporters, either would have been evidence of the sang-froid of a martyr; to the judge who sentenced him, proof of the cold blood of an unrepentant ...”

“... are more than three thousand years old and there are commentators who believe that they may have been written by a woman, a highly placed figure in the court of King Solomon. Jenny Diski’s latest novel is a third-person account of misadventure in Genesis: Only Human rattles through the lives of Adam, Cain and Noah and retells the story of Abraham ...”

“... of different males fight for supremacy – this is sperm competition. At the same time, the female may be able to select the sperm that are best for her – this is sperm choice. This is the true battle of the sexes. The males and females of each species are permanently locked in a struggle to out-evolve each other as their reproductive equipment and behaviour ...”

“... forms an ambiguous apex where the two kinds of story – myth and history, both fictional – may or may not meet. The novel is a kaleidoscope of triangles: myth, history, literature; Sol, Jakob, Ruth; Atalanta, Meilanion, Meleager; Sol, Thyella, her lover Xanthos, whose name means ‘yellow’, which associates him ...”

“... late at night. The procedure for the curfew is essentially that individual local authorities may design a curfew scheme which must then be approved by the Home Office. The scheme must last for a maximum of 90 days and must begin no earlier than 9 p.m. and end no later than 6 a.m. The police have the power to escort any child found in breach of a curfew ...”

“... Means is insistent; his repetitions, like his rhythms, are persuasive: they seem meaningful. It may be that the wax-paper factory passed by in one story manufactures the wax paper that leads to the accidental death of the arsonist. A paper factory (the same?) appears in ‘Sleeping Bear Lament’, too; the younger Sam once walked for a moment, ‘like ...”

“... am a follower of General Fehim . . . and my job is to kill the enemies of Panjshir, whoever they may be. While Karzai and his ministers were hiding safely in America, we fought and died to defeat first the Russians and then the Taliban . . . And if anyone tries to take power from us, I will fight them too, whether it is Americans, Canadians or ...”

“... lawsuits against P2P sites such as Grokster and Morpheus. The legal basis of the RIAA’s suits may seem shaky, since what they are doing is suing for the closure of websites on the grounds that they distribute software which damages the interests of the music industry. When the video recorder case came before the Supreme Court, it ruled that the video was ...”

“... a barricade in the place de la Concorde, and forcing the police to resort to tear gas. Burton may exaggerate the centrality of bloodshed in French political culture, but his close attention to what Natalie Zemon Davis has called the ‘rites of violence’ reveals some enduring historical patterns. As he puts it, episode after episode of ‘almost ...”

“... pages of Cardinal Gasquet and the belligerence of Belloc: ‘Heretics all, whoever you may be,/In Tarbes or Nimes, or over the sea,/You never shall have good words from me./Caritas non conturbat me.’ Duffy could never have written anything as unpleasant as that. But he could have been the target of Robert Browning’s jibe (in ‘Bishop ...”

“... and sex, but who has not been present in the seminar rooms where these arcane matters are debated, may begin to glaze over. I’m afraid that there were moments when mine did, in spite or because of the fact that, as Lake notes in a generous acknowledgment, we have shared those seminars for the last twenty-five years. It will seem odd, as odd as Lake’s ...”

“... or humanism in the first place, he was energised as well as alarmed by the cataclysm. It may have helped to put him into a sanatorium, but it also turned his thoughts towards a constructive solution. If civilisation lay in ruins, then there was a momentous opportunity to sweep away this heap of broken images and start afresh. Or rather, start once ...”