"Operating literally at the end of our tether, we searched for over an hour in nightmare terrain: a vertical cliff face pockmarked with caves and covered with fern-like marine growth".
Tóibín expands: The novel in English during the 19th century is full of parents whose influence must be evaded or erased, to be replaced by figures who operate either literally or figuratively as aunts, both kind and mean, both well-intentioned and duplicitous, both rescuing and destroying.
It also has the flexibility to operate in literally any medium and with different types of adherent cells.
Yet "these groups proliferate and operate with impunity, literally under the nose of Pakistan's army," said Christine Fair, assistant professor at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
"They (corporations) literally operate at the expense of everyone around at them, at the expense of the environment, at the expense of the community they operate in, and there's really no checks and balances on them like there is in government," she says.
They literally cannot operate the factory," he said.
And when we consider the UK's politicians - stressed by intense competition and workloads in an environment that makes Gormenghast look like Butlins, led to believe they're a class apart, working in a gilded palace where they operate, in some senses, literally above the law… It's a testament to their moral fibre that they don't eat constituents in the lobbies.
The United States found itself literally operating as a gigantic bank, taking short-term liquid deposits from countries with surpluses and investing the money in long-term, risky assets at home and abroad.
Hong Kong's Gobee Bike, one such upstart — which literally operates in the shadow of those two Chinese giants — just announced a $9 million Series A round aimed at expanding its six-month-old dock-less bike rental service overseas.
