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“... made by the aviator Harry Gatty in Nature Is Your Guide (1958) between ‘home-centred’ and ‘self-centred’ navigation. Using the former, you consider your position in a relation to a single fixed reference point. Milner imagines members of ‘the earliest human society’ going out to hunt or gather with a sense of how far they were from home, and in ...”

“... of no hours, no minutes, no seconds and I reckoned I was in with a chance. I was dancing the Self-Portrait along inside the yellow buoys, nice dry water ahead, when I started picking up some nonsense from my old rival Renato Salvadori, the knitwear salesman from Lake Como, appearing for Martini. Renato was chopping up the water with a series of kick ...”

“... in the Observer uninfluenced by current styles. Not for him the Leavisite mixture of innuendo and self-righteousness intended to convict writers of holding improper thoughts. He always spoke with respect for others and considered their dignity when he disagreed with them. It is true that whatever ideology had him in its grasp at any given time he followed ...”

“... you never know when one might come along? And yet it is a kind of warning, an antidote to the self-help that urges you to ‘crack right on, kick over the traces, step out of victimhood, let go, move on, and all that’ – it’s a story of ‘self-unhelp’, without the debased form of catharsis that misery porn ...”

“... it is in fact, as is sadly the convention with all too many ‘literary’ novels these days, a self-regarding show-tour of the fascinatingly sensitive inside of its author’s own head. But women in general, and feminists in particular, are meant not only to love this sort of stuff, but to find it personally and politically useful. And this presumably is ...”

“... of nations. It is a lament for the fall of man. The projection of the generous instincts of self-sacrifice from the individual to a collective object is a psychological jump that contributes a new and unnecessary evil to the life of society – unnecessary because it goes beyond the minimum necessary evils of regulation, coercion and punishment. The ...”

“... an end in itself. The word that sums up this transformation is ‘professionalism’, not the self-employed but the institutional model of professionalism. The subject is much written about these days. Studies have appeared on the theory of professionalism and on specific professions like law, medicine, engineering and accounting and on such academic ...”

“... As she lies there naked on the only hot Day in a ruined August reading Hugo Williams, She looks up at the window-cleaner Who has hesitantly appeared. Wishing that he were Hugo Williams She luxuriates provocatively, Her fantasy protected by the glass Or so she thinks. Would that this abrasive oaf Were Hugo Williams, she muses – Imagining the poet in a black Armani Bomber jacket from Miami Vice, His lips pursed to kiss ...”

“... their older sisters. It is, at least in Waugh’s version, a story of the astounding success of a self-made industrialist in Austria in the second half of the 19th century whose family fortune came to grief when the Nazis discovered that the Wittgensteins had Jewish ancestors and so, by the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, were suddenly liable to have their ...”

“... classics’. Both the impressive range of Wharton’s later reading and her lifelong habits of self-education evidently had their origins here. Characteristically, the arrangement of domestic architecture doubles in her telling as an architecture of the self: ‘there was in me a secret retreat where I wished no one to ...”

“... Irish border was resolved. This focused May’s mind, and produced a surprising, though ultimately self-undermining outcome. Once she realised that the hard Brexit she had advanced in her conference speech threatened the return of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic she had no choice but to retreat. The Withdrawal Agreement she eventually ...”

“... Teasing out the possible linkages I – no you – who noticed – if the world – no – the world if – take plankton – I feel I cannot love any more – take plankton – that love is reserved for an other kind of existence – take plankton – that such an existence is a form of porn now – no – what am I saying – take plankton – it is the most important plant on earth – think love – composes at least half the biosphere’s entire primary production – love this – love what – I am saying you have no choice – that’s more than all the land plants on the whole planet put together – blooms so large they can be photographed from space – everything living – take it – here you take it, I can’t hold it anymore – you don’t want it – I don’t care – you carry it for now – I need to catch my breath – I want to lie here and listen – within fifty years if we are lucky – I am writing this in 2015 – like spraying weedkiller over all the world’s vegetation – that’s our raw material, our inventory, right now, we are going through the forms of worship, we call it news, we will make ourselves customers, we won’t wait, how fast can we be delivered – will get that information to you – requires further study – look that’s where the river used to be – one morning I woke up and I was born – I realised I was born – earth was the place to be – hurtling winding unwinding thick nexus looking up at sky down at soil will I learn how to stand on it – I will – I am standing, look, I am a growth possibility, will accumulate a backlog, will become an informed consumer→shapeless unspendable future→this was my song to you→ I stood for the first time on my own→unimaginable strength in these feet, these hands→what am I supposed to not harm→I want to touch things till they break→that is how to see them→all the points of contact→entropy, diminishment, pressing and then pulling back and looking, leaving alone→unimaginable→a meaning in every step→I change shape→it is allowed→wind proves everything wrong→so nothing is unimagined→press too far and there you have it→dream→shape of certainty→wide forces gathering in the sunlight→thought→feel this it is serenity→this is completeness→something darted into the bush→no forcing just curve flight gathering terror unfinality clumps of feel/think then tree-swallows bursting up out of the tree they were not leaves after all the field of rules not visible but suddenness its own rule→surprise ...”

“... it be lovely to be free … just be a beautiful mind growing from outward impressions. I think self-consciousness is like gin – it stops the growth.’ Beyond the warm world of female confidences growth was inhibited in other ways. Edna Waugh had been spotted at the age of 14 by a friend of her father, a barrister called William Clarke Hall, who urged ...”

“... misunderstanding become his life. One of Ford’s attractions, in a literary culture contorted by self-consciousness and irony, is his directness: ‘My name is Frank Bascombe. I am a sportswriter,’ begins the first of his famous trilogy of novels: The Sportswriter (1986), Independence Day (1995) and The Lay of the Land (2006). Bascombe is a narrator who ...”

“... The Feminist Companion to Literature in English is itself the product of impressive feminist companionship. Listed in the preamble are three editors, four consulting editors, 12 contributing editors, and 54 ‘contributors’ – all women, all university teachers. Academic addresses range over three continents (Asia and Africa are missing, although women writers from those corners of the world are generously represented ...”