“... 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 ...”

“... of the afterlife will then be a history of our conceptions of God, as well as a history of our self-conceptions, of our utopias and terrors, and this is what John Casey provides. Casey is in many ways an ideal guide. He is bracingly conservative about the writing of cultural history, meaning that he likes texts, and chronology, and evidence. He has taught ...”

“... taxes are those who work for the government,’ said the mayor. ‘The money can’t be hidden. Self-employed people, doctors, lawyers, mechanics, civil engineers, builders, plumbers – no one pays taxes. From the shipowners all the way down.’ In using tax evasion to make his case against the kharatsi, Filippou inadvertently explains why the government ...”

“... he looks at the wounded in battle, the blood in the water: ‘All faces of the same man, one big self.’ Dying is one half of war: the other half is killing. Many of the men of C Company die in the extended fight to capture a hill from the enemy, but those who reach the top proceed to kill, and kill rampantly, horribly. It is then, during the massacre of ...”

“... postwar government had the conviction or courage to make real such a moment, and Akihito’s self-defined role as protector of the constitution made it impossible, by definition, for him to step outside it unaccompanied. It is one of Japan’s greatest failures in 75 years of postwar success that it remains unreconciled with the countries in the world ...”

“... by ‘blood-and-thunderists’ at home. He was also frustrated that the censor thwarted his self-representation in his letters as a chivalric knight, a youth forged by war into an honourable man. ‘Amongst other things that modern warfare has done away with is the long and accurate chronicle which used to find its way to the anxious household, giving ...”

“... into danger is to assert that asylum seekers in general are lying. As a political strategy this is self-defeating, because, to be effective, it relies on the impossibility of satisfying the public’s appetite for crackdowns: the more the government tells people that the great majority of those seeking asylum do not need it, the more asylum seekers it will be ...”

“... apparently felt they had more urgent problems to address. The only printed response came from a self-styled ‘artist and big game-shot’, who claimed that his experiences of stalking deer in Scotland had shown him the importance of ‘breaking up the outline’ rather than just trying to make uniforms tone in with the background. This fellow vouched that ...”

“... describes the plague with remarkable scientific detachment, though not without great pathos, his self-observed recovery and subsequent immunity from this unique world-historical disease perhaps setting him off on that journey adrift from his locality, a stranger among his own people, wandering untouchable, a ghost, watching without participating any longer ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... dart upon me and sting me, Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all. Nothing of this self-doubting despondency about his poetic creations is to be found in the millions of words Traubel credits to Whitman in his final years. Rather, he is intent by then only on monumentalising himself, as the conversations turn, time and again, to his ...”

“... was thought likely to get a first but didn’t; he was understandably a little mortified but his self-reproach can’t have been helped when he received a note from McFarlane saying, ‘Here are your marks and pretty miserable they are, too.’ Others of his year with less resilience than Adam received similar notes and I find this hard to understand, let ...”