But he never sustains a line of thought long enough or searchingly enough to reach a truly provocative insight.

As are so many such attempts to find new ways of enlivening the classics, such an interpretation is less a provocative insight than an illustration of what we already know.

The book "is full of refreshingly oblique, provocative insights," George Johnson wrote in these pages in 1997.

Mr. Batra would have done better to outline more of his own provocative insights about the American economy.

Kenneth Turan calls it "brainy and light on its feet, bristling with provocative insights and probing questions"; according to Turan.

But in the midst of Lear's madness, he comes up with some provocative insights.

In one of many fascinating and provocative insights in a commentary remarkably without sexual politics or bias, Ribeiro says that Princess Diana "thought herself into beauty".

Predictable free-market nostrums aside, the essayists offer provocative and timely insights.

Eliot's thinking here sometimes relies on romantic clichés insufficiently analysed in Russell Square, yet it could also produce provocative insights.