“... that Edward cannot love ... he cannot respond to my love ... I have prayed that I and my baby may die, but we shall not, though this would free [him]. I am as strong as ever. I pile work on work till my body can scarce move for weariness, but nothing lifts the darkness from my soul. By 1911 the dangerous game that Thomas played with Helen had produced ...”

“... into the administration of Cuban things. Revolutions do not respect luxurious arts, though they may carry them on. Do the Cubans really still produce the 700 vitolas, types of cigar, that they claim to produce? Rollers grow old Marx himself (evidence of Liebknecht, cited by Cabrera) smoked dreadful cigars. Wait and see. Caviar is produced by a fish, it is ...”

“... species, despite the objection that it is akin to sexism, racism, and other heinousness. Or humans may be qualitatively distinct, a belief shared by Christianity and Islam on the basis that we are ‘made in God’s image’. A book which appeared just before the Warnock Report, and which complements and expands on the ‘Warnock topics’, is Human ...”

“... the lash: ‘That would be all very fine if he weren’t making himself a soldier – whatever he may say to the contrary – through his volitions, his perceptions, his emotions ... He thus stubbornly continues to flee what he’s making of himself – which plunges him into a state of wretched, diffuse anguish’ (Sartre’s italics). Sartre is not ...”

“... swayed by the current of sound. The sound is also a blast, a whirlwind; when the concert ends you may well be temporarily deaf. Subtlety would be wasted here. What you hear is what you know; if you don’t know the words of a song, don’t bother trying to make them out. The sound is a physical element in which you move and breathe; even at the far end of the ...”

“... found in a dusty classroom in Witwatersrand University a copy of the now banned Sowetan, dated 29 May 1986. There was a report of a treason trial in the course of which the counsel for the defence cross-questioned a security policeman about the video of a funeral which the police had confiscated. They had also arrested the crew. Mr Bizos: Could it not be ...”

“... it. There seems to be a general fear that the Iraqi enthusiasm for the conservation of antiquities may go a touch too far. In Babylon we saw the plinths for statues of Ishtar and Ashtoreth, and our guide grumbled about the ancient puritans who had smashed the graven images. ‘What do you think of that, Mr David?’ said a poet. ‘Destroying all those ...”

“... it; spontaneity and habit. As for thinking, our poets can do that for us by showing how feelings may unglibly be brought to equilibrium. The morality of the right ordering of sensation is what Thwaite’s poems strain toward: as in ‘Sick Child’, he tries to cope with helplessness and foreignness of the appalling kind. No theory of inspiration incites ...”

“... is the direct involvement of ministers. Between them, the Green Paper and this series of reviews may lead to decisions, within the year ahead, on the future of the Welfare State, or a large part of it. If we do not like what we get, that will be either because we do not share the ideas of the decision-makers of the day or because we do not share their views ...”

“... enjoyment of their rights.’ No one can now judge the real danger of the situation. Informers may have exaggerated, but there was the indisputable episode of the Cato Street Conspiracy, when a group of fanatics, penetrated by Lord Sidmouth’s spies, planned to murder the entire Cabinet. The ministers made a joke of it but at heart they cannot have ...”

“... to one’s own funeral: no beneficiary of the prize had ever gone on to write anything good. It may be coincidence (as opposed to an onset of Delphic delusion), but Bellow’s first post Nobel novel transmits all the strain and clangour of a juggernaut changing gear. The vision has widened but also become narrower; most noticeably, the fluid musicality of ...”

“... as he later suggested, conceive the idea of the Land League while he broke bones in Dartmoor. It may not be surprising to find that he probably never read Marx: it is remarkable that he did not read Lalor until 1880. The massively detailed account of his American journey, if sometimes verging on the tedious, elucidates the gradual crystallisation of his ...”

“... second half of the poem ‘bulk is being sought for its own sake’ is hardly a just criticism. It may be that in previous versions of the story Odysseus revealed himself to his wife earlier on: but if he does not in the Odyssey, that is part of the poem’s design. The toils and the wiles of the hero must go on beyond his return home. (Neither did Dante or ...”

“... a system that they could not beat Which reasserts itself through their distress. White flakes may decorate the searchlight beams – The barbed wire is exactly what it seems. Those men and women braver than the brave Penned in the open air are telling you It’s better to risk death than be a slave – Something you thought that you already knew. And ...”

“... and claiming (or repossessing) new territories for modern fiction. It’s evidently not easy, and may indeed be impossible. A dominant myth alluded to is that of Sisyphus’s sterile labour, and the main plot of Headbirths ostensibly chronicles an ambitious novel-film collaboration which never got off the ground, and of which the present book is the meagre ...”