“... the individual, about freedom and dignity, about the human being as subject and the fact that one may not turn him into an object.’ ‘Not even if he himself would be happy about it later?’ Michael asks. ‘We’re not talking about happiness, we’re talking about dignity and freedom. Even as a little boy, you knew the difference. It was no comfort to ...”

“... misunderstanding and untranslatability, reveals that money alone is translatable. Davidson may be suffocated by her ignorance of local language, customs and gestures, but, like many other tourists, she never confuses the value of fifty rupees in India with, for instance, that of a pound in Britain. Another point comes to mind reading of her travails ...”

“... the infallible bisection of his hair. As soon as the trial got under way at the Old Bailey in May 1918, Billing attracted the support of the Christian Scientists, who believed him to be ‘the Saviour, Christ the King, come to redeem them in this moment of national peril’. Concerned that he would not be able to continue his work if imprisoned, ‘a ...”

“... the refusal to let his pots wobble, always counted against De Morgan with the craft purists. May Morris thought it his only fault. Bernard Leach – himself much less technically skilled – was dismissive. De Morgan’s achievement was the balance in his work between the conflicting elements in the Arts and Crafts ethos, in which individuals attempted ...”

“... empty’ by his green gaze. Multilingual, he is the product of a famous university; and one may be sure that, unlike Professor Moriarty, he did not fritter away his 21st year writing a ‘Treatise on the Binomial Theorem’. His aim is not just to redress the long-standing wrongs of China; as an agent of that ancient and secret society, the Si Fan, he ...”

“... however, is evasive. To stand back and ask how much people take in life, how much they make, may be scholastic, or simply naive, but one cannot help asking why this kind of social theory persists in presenting pre-emptive solutions to a problem over which the more fastidious agonise all their lives. The question about Bourdieu is why someone so ...”

“... think there is a disposition among all classes not to bear with the troubles that may arise in their own houses. If a person is troublesome from senile dementia, dirty in his habits, they will not bear with it now. Persons are more easily removed to an asylum than they were a few years ago.’ In our own day official thinking has come full ...”

“... Barbra Streisand, helped craft this letter, though schlock sincerity is a tennis staple. Agassi may have felt betrayed, but he wasn’t actually paying Bollettieri much. Similarly, when Bollettieri called Agassi into his office at the academy for persistently flouting rules, defying discipline and being threatened with expulsion from a local private school ...”

“... behave like the lodger, agreeably surprised that I am allowed to make myself a cup of tea. Heaven may turn out to be a sort of hotel, the bills being sent to another place. Entrance qualifications, however, will remain problematic, although one hopes that that original hotelier’s refusal to provide accommodation, on the grounds of there being no room at the ...”

“... was impossible simply to replace the broken part with another, identical, one. The modern reader may wonder why Jefferson sought out the gunsmith. In school, we are taught that modernity was brought about by revolutions of two kinds: political (as in America and France) and industrial. If the connections between the two are discussed at all, it is only at ...”

“... hall-of-mirrors effect. But then Auster could never make a case for himself as a stylist, and it may be that film, after poetry, criticism, non-fiction and novels, is his ideal home. His business, after all, has always been more the reinvention of form than the resuscitation of language. ‘Squeeze Play’, for example, inverts the standard whodunnit, being ...”

“... curator for much of the final section. With him comes a switch to politicised melodrama which may be designed to be emotionally ravaging and historically significant, but which never finds its stride. DeFoe begins to utter home truths of great import, and, for a chilling moment, turns into one of those smug idiot savants that Hollywood is so fond of, even ...”

“... showed a keen eye for the blackish tales of restless lives, lives that fall short despite a devil-may-care audacity. In ‘Pickpocket’, Chop-a-Leg, who has been deaf to medical advice (‘I had diabetes 12 years and wouldn’t quit smokin’), puts his faith in porridge to lower his cholesterol level: ‘I like looking at the Pilgrim on the box. What a ...”

“... his refinement of tone in face of such heartbreak, but I suppose that is one of the graces a poem may strive for. It is a desperate measure to take comfort from the budding of an almond tree: In labour the tree was becoming itself. I, too, rooted to earth and ringed by darkness, from the death of myself saw myself blossoming, wrenched from the caul of my ...”

“... style would for once be wholly appropriate? Why academic presses rather than HarperCollins? This may be mere circumstance. Perhaps film rights are even now being auctioned. But I suspect not. Corbin’s work is not packaged for bookclubs or bestseller lists. He does not present picaresque narratives, inspiring characters or improving parables, but rather ...”