“... goal my whole life: to become an Icelandic writer.’The reader is made aware of opinionatedness, self-confidence, indomitability, mercuriality, application, aggression. Qualities not attractive in themselves, and often put to the service of poorer ends. Guðmundsson frequently mentions Laxness’s charm. He asked a lot of his mother, his wives and his ...”

“... not discern [them] from Inglish men’. Exile, voluntary or otherwise, provided opportunities for self-reinvention. Leonard Ragapo, who came to England with Raleigh, became a society celebrity and generous host, ‘not after the ordinarie rude manner of the Indians’, according to the adventurer Robert Harcourt, ‘but in a more civill fashion, and with much ...”

“... and British establishments, during his detention as well as his dictatorship, Schweitzer’s self-consciously civilised manner and superficially reasonable arguments about Chile’s right to govern itself were distractions from the electrocutions and ejections from helicopters in which the Pinochet regime specialised. Sands’s admission that he was a ...”

“... wealth with the remark: ‘It is extremely difficult for the best of Men to divest themselves of Self-Interest.’ Indeed, the foundations for Connecticut Hall, the oldest surviving building on Yale’s campus, were laid in 1750 by a team of free and enslaved workers. The anti-slavery movement took encouragement from the American Revolution. In New ...”

“... from the start. Rereading the novel, I kept thinking about Mickey’s transformation from naif to self-actualised cynic in The Switch and wished that Jackie had been given room to grow. The early scene in which Jackie resists Ordell is particularly telling. We’ve already seen Ordell post bond for someone he wants to silence. We know what’s meant to ...”

“... Aeneid) of 1490, just a couple of years before he died, he opens with a brief, poignant self-description ‘sittyng in my studye where as laye many dyuerse paunflettis and bookys’. A bibliophile who had done so much to help spread the craze in England, he still thought in terms apposite to the manuscript culture into which he had been ...”

“... produce poets. Howe’s New England is a crucible of philosophy and theodicy, ambition and self-coruscation and frugality. One need look no further than the arresting juxtaposition of epigraphs with which she begins The Birth-Mark (1993), her critical study of early American literature. A passage from Hawthorne’s short story about facial ...”

“... military force at will, with no legitimating arguments beyond the pathological fiction of its self-proclaimed superiority.What does all this mean for Venezuela? For now, the post-Maduro regime looks a lot like Maduro’s: his vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, was immediately sworn in as acting president. There are widespread rumours, fanned by the White ...”

“... realities behind the tables and figures. Unfortunately, contrary to the views expressed in many self-congratulatory publications – Bronowski’s Ascent of Man is a recent example – man was a late starter and is slow in learning. It is only during the last few thousand years that his control of the environment has been sufficient to advance his health ...”

“... by their own inhabitants in Kampala and other towns were a grim foretaste of the political self-destruction in store, which culminated in last December’s election. In a typical Ugandan political paradox, faith in the election was such that virtually everyone voted, even if they had to queue for a day to do so, but the results read over Uganda Radio ...”

“... felt to be inadequate and inappropriate, and there was a tendency to turn to a more impersonal, self-authenticating ‘technical vocabulary’. It seemed to guarantee a kind of ‘object-ive’ writing which was otherwise constantly imperilled by all the other literature-soaked rhetorics currently available. A neat chapter on the explorer John Charles ...”

“... the midday sun. It would be a mistake to think of Marquez’s literary universe as an invented, self-referential, closed system. He is not writing about Middle Earth, but about the one we all inhabit. Macondo exists. That is its magic.It sometimes seems, however, that Marquez is consciously trying to foster the myth of ‘Garcialand’. Compare the first ...”

“... a central organising committee of booksellers and publishers based in London who rely on small, self-motivating committees around the country. But would we really want a single, centrally-organised event that for one week in 52 would bring books to the centre of our national life? We’ve been going about things differently, and perhaps not only because of ...”

“... make me wonder whether I ought to pursue her (she is called Rachel N ... and I suspect is coolly self-centred like most women that I fall for).’ In 1939: ‘If I make any money in America ... then I may look round for a wife.’ In 1943: ‘In July 41, I met a girl called S ... Harry thought I might like her, & brought her to Cambridge one weekend ... She ...”

“... from revelation, as the inescapable conclusions of the rational mind drawing upon certain self-evident first principles’. The question, in the first instance Vitoria’s question in lectures that circulated widely before his death in 1546, was whether the dominion over the Indians could be justified in this way. Vitoria was certain that the civil ...”