“... here from the massacrous world of Blood Meridian, since the boy worries even about this act of self-defence: ‘I dont know. I dont know nothin about him. I never even knew his name. He could have been a pretty good old boy. I dont know. I dont know that he’s supposed to be dead.’ These reflections concern a paid assassin. John Grady’s ...”

“... activity, it is not easy to unravel the mutually-reinforcing motives of selflessness and self-interest, and Prochaska does not try to do so. All that can safely be said is that most members of the royal family have difficulty distinguishing between concern about society, concern about the social order and concern about what best to do so they can ...”

“... could he turned into a sacred space, a secular shrine. We catch a whiff here of the high-minded self-indulgence of today’s avant-garde ‘installations’. Most of the radical ideas about framing in the last decades of the 19th century which are documented in this book were conceived by artists, and chiefly, often exclusively, with reference to the needs ...”

“... Surrealism, characteristically blended with pseudo-archaic proverbial sagacity, fails to disguise self-pity. In life, he said, one throws a ball and hopes that one’s friends will form a wall that enables it to return: but it usually falls, as if it had hit a wet sheet. Huffington, concerned to help us to understand the deterioration of Picasso’s relations ...”

“... however unresponsive and unappetising – are what George Eliot called equivalent centres of self: as real to themselves as we are to ourselves. Lucy Ellmann has written a slim but stylish first novel. The matter of Sweet Desserts is easily summarised, though summary destroys the odd angling of the narrative. This is a daughter’s novel, but told ...”

“... than simple emergency food relief, the EPLF can also claim to be working towards the goal of self-reliance. Yet all of these advances are cordoned off from the rest of Africa by the remoteness of the terrain and the exigencies of the war. It is a strange situation: in a secluded corner of the continent a ragged army of Eritrean fighters is defending some ...”

“... one central reason. It exposes both its main subject and her royal catch, not as the dim-witted, self-obsessed lovers who have been pickled for posterity, but as nasty, determined Fascists who wanted to preside over a ‘new social order’ which would do away for ever with all pretence at democracy and consign all opposition to the ...”

“... its manipulation, by the government of the United States. This is mannered and highly self-conscious prose, ungainly and even downright ugly. Does it clarify an idea or a principle or a fact? It certainly requires some effort to disentangle, and it certainly mirrors the stalemate between Cubans and Americans. But after reading it one is only able ...”

“... illusions, those properties of coherence and inherence that make a good piece of writing a self-sustaining world of words. If you attempt something of this kind, you assume the burden of telling your audience, with appropriate method and emphasis, what they will discover that they already know; and there can be no greater challenge to those skills of ...”

“... Douglas was sure to bring him further disasters. It was the clearest possible proof of Wilde’s self-destructiveness that knowing all he did about the treachery of this lover he should again put himself in his hands. If one emotion prevails over all others in Ellmann’s book it is loathing and contempt for Bosie, Wilde’s great love and worst enemy – a ...”

“... in high politics. Lloyd George had learned the trade in a hard school. Though incapable of self-criticism, he was shrewd at judging, and ruthless in exploiting, the reactions of others. He was a first-class negotiator. His political perceptions were extremely quick: he was never tied by inertia to his previous position. He kept his ear close to the ...”

“... scene of many meetings between Pym and Harvey, as her diaries reveal). Adam’s ineffable self-centredness recalls Archdeacon Hoccleve’s, and provides some mild comedy which would easily translate into a form of affectionate teasing. Cassandra is so worshippingly submissive that she can hardly be seen as the vehicle of violent disappointment. She ...”

“... There is a painful irony in the fact that the poet’s mental anguish overcame what vestiges of self-control he still retained on one of the most grandiose of late Augustan musical and literary occasions. In February and March 1779 three much-publicised performances took place in London of an elaborate musical setting of Horace’s Carmen Seculare. This ...”

“... Horne took over the Bulletin in 1961, he killed off the slogan ‘Australia for the White Man.’ Self-assurance was, and remains, his strong suit. Horne’s writing about Australian cultural history and current affairs is a cut above journalism in a country whose journalism, at its best, has always had the virtue of being willing to get above itself. The ...”

“... regard for Mother Gisson, the wise-woman? Is Broch criticising him, perhaps indulging in self-criticism? Casey has found a letter of Broch’s, written while he was working on Massenpsychologie, which states that he is concerned ‘not with the behaviour of the masses but with the problem of the lost and lonely individual, who seeks ...”