“... know her employment status: did she have a National Insurance number? Did she have proof she was self-employed, a student or on benefits? ‘I never claimed benefits: how can you ask me for benefits? I never claimed for benefits. I work! Can’t you see I’m working!’ She had to bring a letter with proof of her status to the police station within two ...”

“... had received serious head injuries, and about twenty had lost an eye. Then there’s the matter of self-inflicted harm: the pig-headedness of railing against a lower speed limit, which figures suggest is already responsible for a drop in road deaths; the destruction of speed cameras; the demonisation of Macron; the flurries of fake news and wild theories from ...”

“... Czechoslovakia. In the end, Volonte’s feral energy worked in perfect counterpoint to Delon’s self-restraint, while Montand gave one of his finest performances as an alcoholic who overcomes his demons for the sake of the heist – arguably the most brilliantly choreographed robbery in film history. Something of the tenderness in Bob le flambeur ...”

“... cows originally brought to America by the Spanish colonisers and allowed to run wild. Remarkably self-sufficient, the longhorn cow was not wholly unlike the buffalo it replaced.The Amerindians for their part were replaced by Anglo-Americans and Hispanics, who moved around on horseback, herding the cows together and driving them east to be killed. As ...”

“... they feed on themselves. Conspiracies, corruption. We are all too easily swallowed into a self-sustaining, multivoiced protest entity, a sack of squabbling cats certain of one thing: defeat. To get back to the river I had to follow one of the less celebrated streams, the Northern Outfall Sewer, now rebranded as the Olympic Park Greenway. It seemed ...”

“... you thought he was about to make his point, he took an abrupt turn and plunged into a deep pool of self-pity. This involved a long-winded anecdote about how the Supreme Court judges would rather attend a colleague’s daughter’s wedding than just get it over with and decide that he is a constitutional president … I have heard some dictators’ speeches in ...”

“... which puts an almost treacly patina on the prose – designer prose it is, good, tasteful and self-evidently rich. In this book he writes about the rich too, Ravelstein suddenly a multi-millionaire from the success of his book (Bloom’s original book called The Closing of the American Mind). I’m perhaps behind the times here but I would have thought it ...”

“... confidence? Who is the man that can sacrifice every principle of public virtue to the most sordid self-interest? Who is the man that, without remorse, can disturb the tranquillity of domestic happiness? Who is the man that, without mercy or common decency, can wound the peace of every honest individual? Who is the man that is false to his friends, inimical to ...”

“... Bill refers to a fellow subaltern as Crumpets I can hear his boarding school accent and catch his self-possession. He speaks both French and German well enough to make himself understood to the natives and captured invaders, and has about him a lightly worn, unselfconscious patriotism and pride in his regiment. He is also modestly knowledgeable about French ...”

“... get their kit off, are not glamorised at all, with the English actor fearless in the degree of his self-exposure. God’s Own Country stays in the mind as Call Me by Your Name doesn’t, with the scenes where the Romanian takes off and abandons the farmer heartrending as the idyllic French film never is quite. In the days when I might have written a television ...”

“... camera. Celebrities like Jim Carrey and Courtney Cox played themselves as ‘guests’, often self-mockingly. The critics loved it. It inspired Ricky Gervais and the later work of Larry David. It was loathsomely funny about the showbiz world it roasted and was part of. Yet, as it turns out, it wasn’t hard enough on itself. Biskind quotes Janis Hirsch, a ...”

“... of capitalism is obliged to take the very form of the market – novelty, stereotype, flash self-advertisement, cheap repeatable motif – deep into its bones. ‘Baudelaire wanted to create a poncif, a cliché. Lemaître assures him that he has succeeded.’ Finally, then, after what seems like long wandering away from the world of the arcades, we ...”

“... in a pharmaceutical state he called ‘Obetrolling’. My affinity for Obetrol had to do with self-awareness, which I used to privately call ‘doubling’. It’s hard to explain. I’m still not entirely sure what I meant by this, nor why it seemed so profound and cool to not only be in a room but be totally aware that I was in the room, seated in a ...”

“... or “liberty” or “humanity” or “the free world” but an attack on the world’s self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?’ Merely raising the question led to Sontag being denounced as an apologist for terrorism.‘Terrorism’: the word acquired the magical power of stopping all ...”

“... is mortal to songs like ‘Das Rosenband’ and ‘Heidenröslein’.The question​ of self-awareness is of central interest to Christian Gerhaher, one of the most accomplished singers of the present time and one of the most thoughtful. In Lyrical Diary, he ruminates on his experience as a lieder singer, with special reference to the works of ...”