“... by polls showing Dilma’s popularity had fallen to single figures, moved to impeach her. On May Day, she was unable even to give the traditional televised address to the nation: when her speech on International Women’s Day in March had been broadcast people banged saucepans and blew car horns, a form of protest that became known as ...”

“... cite him at diocesan conferences as a modern update of the calling of the disciples (‘Matthew may have been a tax-collector. What’s so special about that? Our crucifer happens to be a bus driver’). Though Leo would much have preferred marching down the centre aisle to where he currently was, stuck behind the wheel of a No. 74 inching up Putney High ...”

“... for 14 years, the Workers’ Party (PT) has been comprehensively repudiated and its survival may now be in doubt. Lula, the most popular ruler in Brazilian history, has been incarcerated by Moro and awaits further jail sentences. His successor, evicted from office midway through her second term, is a virtual outcast, reduced to a humiliating fourth place ...”

“... to him. Later he was asked about his links with the FLN and the whereabouts of Agouliz, which he may not have known. In the closing stages, after two detainees were murdered in front of him, his interrogator made an incision in his back, packed it with rock salt and sealed it with sticking plaster. Weakened by his ordeal and sure he was about to die of ...”

“... in the notes. This is a pity, since this drunk’s autobiography – offensive as its confessions may be – constitutes the main source we have for London’s first 15 years of life. The earliest letter the editors of this collection can turn up is from July 1896, and there is nothing substantial until the turn of the century, when London was 24. Working ...”

“... and scholarship’ preclude the substance of older works; ‘the approach of some older works may seem unfashionable, but the content is frequently more detailed.’ Both of us, I think, work at a critical but respectful distance from the radical nationalist interpretation of Australian history. Our subtitles echo our inheritance. Her romantic catchphrase ...”

“... version is a version of John’s version, and what, in the last analysis, Updike’s upshot may be deemed to be. Updike has recently pointed out that his novel is a version of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, rewritten, as it were, from the husband’s point of view. However, I have no doubt that, at a deeper level, Roger’s Version is an instalment ...”

“... is given over wholly to ‘The Favourite Vice of the 19th Chapter’ – smoking. Small as it may seem, this too has its wider significance. ‘No other popular amusement,’ Altick claims, ‘solitary or social, appears more often in Victorian fiction than smoking; and its chief instrument was the cigar, which was seen more frequently in those pages than ...”

“... as closely as budgerigars were watched down a coalmine. When they topple from the perch, it may already be too late to run for the lift-shaft. The sky will be transformed into an uncontained cloud of intelligence, the dream of a brain, a brain without a shell: shapeless shapes, impossible colours, the unimaginable imagined. It only begins with the ...”

“... it is his business to record the fact of that recognition in any further metaphor that the reader may understand and apply.’ For the reader who might hesitate before the belief that it was possible to know the mind of God, there are many interesting episodes in the briskly-written Mind of the Maker about the minds of writers. There is ingenuity in the rigid ...”

“... intimacy of a kind – Foucault is intensely alive and present to us at these moments – and it may be as near as we shall ...”

“... to their wives’ sexual needs. But what about couples who wanted to stop having children, who may well have been in the majority? Many GPs were also propagandists about the terrible dangers of masturbation – an idea that had taken root at the beginning of the 18th century, and which doctors were still spreading right up to the end of the 19th century ...”

“... was saying, of father. ‘But will he get anywhere?’ ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘Perhaps. But he may be a touch ...’ Azhar stood on tip-toe to listen. ‘Over hopeful. Over hopeful.’ ‘Yes,’ she said, biting her lip. ‘Tell him to read more Gibbon and Macaulay,’ he said, ‘That should set him straight. Are you feeling ...”

“... things you have done like washing my clothes, or darning my socks ... Although by themselves they may seem trivial and matter-of-fact, do not be deceived by that because they constitute the demonstration of the love which we have for each other, and to me they are of the highest value, for without them our love could not live. Betty, like Coover’s ...”

“... criminals amaze us by their tact and good spirits, as well as by a general lack of brutality that may make us feel wistful. They had no rage to kill. Yet these were the scum and dregs that societies of improvers were anxious to purge from the body politic. The publicity given them in a new age of communication (which was also an aspect of the development of ...”