“... own voice, her innocence, her habit of ironing her husband’s Jockey shorts. This is not so much self-absorbed as honest: she was charming, she was lovable, she was the magnet to which most metal flies. As well as a list of houses, she could have written a list of the names she used for herself: Dolores, Maggie, Carlotta, Claudia, Maria, Maya. (How do ...”

“... not something she needs to think about. One taste of high-grade heroin clouds her mind with self-delight. ‘I’m all primary process,’ she says. ‘I live the examined life. Not one funny little thing gets by me.’Marge is fine with Converse’s plan. He knows a Marine called Ray Hicks, a Zen martial arts enthusiast who will soon be heading home on ...”

“... to do it in. ‘My attachment to England was instinctive, a bid for, if not roots, a kind of self-preservation … I held onto the English language as the rope to save me from drifting awash in the fluidities of multilingualism that surrounded me.’ German seems never to have been an option, partly because of ‘the vast and monstrous thing’, as she ...”

“... attempts to answer himself, do you do with your love of American history? Where to put the self that visits graveyards in other cities, on vacation, even putting off the pleasurable sightseeing of wife and children to kneel down and do a grave-rubbing in crayon? He works best in small biodomes, and what better than a cemetery? We can visualise it as a ...”

“... in and through language, you have to bid farewell to the idea of a stable, unified self. That notion is another of those reassuring fictions – like god, Spinoza’s ‘substance’, Hegel’s Geist, Heidegger’s ‘being’, Lévi-Strauss’s structures – we have devised in order to escape différance and find some anchor, some ‘meaning ...”

“... federalism was established. The EPRDF system stressed autonomy, regional government and self-determination, and lasted for almost three decades. Its executive committee was composed of 36 members, with equal representation from the four parties, though the TPLF held the balance of power. The impetus for the federal system came principally from ...”

“... could be put into the hands of athletes and their unions. This might well be an improvement on the self-selecting membership of the IOC, but I’m not convinced that these organisations are good representatives of the sporting world or that they have adequate forms of democratic accountability themselves. In any case, the IOC is not going to reform itself out ...”

“... to mount a highly effective vaccination programme throughout the strip. Israel acted from self-interest: the ultra-orthodox Haredi community are opposed to vaccination, leaving 175,000 of their children vulnerable to a virus that spreads swiftly and silently.Rarely has the space for humanitarian action been as constricted as it was in Gaza when the ...”

“... and Williams both trace with regret the arc of movements that started off calling for freedom and self-determination but ended up running neocolonial or authoritarian regimes. Williams’s portrayal of Lumumba and Nkrumah is hagiographic at times, but she also offers an alternative story of national liberation, told from the perspective of ...”

“... and improved on Kilby’s version because there were no free-standing wires: the chip was entirely self-contained. ‘The transistors were built into a single block of material. Soon, the “integrated circuits” that Kilby and Noyce had developed would become known as “semiconductors” or, more simply, “chips”.’ The people at Fairchild immediately ...”

“... If Armstrong really is Trump then he’s likely to remain trapped in his bubble of bluster and self-delusion until the money runs out. However, the person he increasingly reminds me of is Malcolm Tucker, the foul-mouthed spin doctor in The Thick of It, who may or may not bear a passing resemblance to Alastair Campbell. For Tucker the only line of defence ...”

“... of Avignon’.The defence tried to insist on closed hearings, but their arguments were ultimately self-defeating. The videos of Gisèle Pelicot’s abuse were, they said, too ‘nauseating’, too ‘indecent and shocking’ for public view; they would disturb the need for ‘serenity and dignity’ in the court. Her willingness to allow the videos to be seen ...”

“... the last people I wished to see – Somehow that the Downs should be seen by cultivated eyes, self-conscious eyes, spoils them to me.’ Her countryside was not to be taken over by these philistine middlebrows. Modernism was on the march, and the enemy was the Squirearchy.Woolf called Squire ‘more repulsive than words can express, and malignant into the ...”

“... didn’t bother him. The circumstances of his childhood and his brother’s loss have made Paul self-absorbed, understandably so perhaps, but he doesn’t see how difficult it must be for Ann bringing up three children on her own. Paul and Anthony’s difficulties with their own mother may lie behind some of this confusion. Paul was boiling with rage about ...”

“... suddenly in the direction of the drinks cabinet to obliterate a gin and tonic. I felt oddly self-satisfied to have the pursuit of Margaret Walsh interrupted by the memory – a discovery in effect – of Maureen’s infatuation with Nancy and her passion for Eliza Doolittle. At the same time, it was as though three real people, Maureen, Margaret and ...”