- fra artikel i vanity fair om Donlad Trumps venskab med den sinistre og skurkagtige advokat (og tidligere McCarthy-assistent ) Roy Cohn, som jeg læste i flyet herover til New York, begges hjemby (min fremhævelse):
"On the day I arrived at Cohn's office, n his imposing limestone town house on East 68th Street, his Rolls-Royce was parked outside. But alle elgance stopped at the front door. I was a fetid place, a shambles of dusty bedroooms and office warrens where young male assistanst made their way up and down the stairs. . Cohn often greeted visitors in a robe. On occasion, I.R.S. agents were said to sit in the hallway , and, knowing Cohn's reputation as a deadbeat, were there to intercept any envelopes with money.
Cohn's bedroom was crowded with a collection stuffed frogs that sat on the floor, propped against a large tv. Everything about him suggested a curipous combination of an arrested child and a sleaze. I sat on a small sofa covered with dozens of stuffed creatures that exploded with dust as I tried to move themaise. Cohn was compact, with a mirthless smile, the scars from his plastic surgeries visible aorund his ears. As he spoke, his tongue darted in and out, he twirled his Rolodex, as if to impress me with his newwork of contacts. "
- fra Charles Dickens' sidste fuldendte roman, Our Mutual Friend, kapitlet "Mr Wegg looks after himesf" (som jeg nærlæste ad absurdum i mit speciale), hvor skurken Silas Wegg besøger den butik, han i sin tid solgte sit amputerede ben til):
"
Silas Wegg, being on his road to the Roman Empire, approaches it by way
of Clerkenwell. The time is early in the evening; the weather moist and
raw. Mr Wegg finds leisure to make a little circuit, by reason that he
folds his screen early, now that he combines another source of income
with it, and also that he feels it due to himself to be anxiously
expected at the Bower. ‘Boffin will get all the eagerer for waiting a
bit,’ says Silas, screwing up, as he stumps along, first his right eye,
and then his left. Which is something superfluous in him, for Nature has
already screwed both pretty tight.
‘If I get on with him as I expect to get on,’ Silas pursues, stumping
and meditating, ‘it wouldn’t become me to leave it here. It wouldn’t be
respectable.’ Animated by this reflection, he stumps faster, and looks
a long way before him, as a man with an ambitious project in abeyance
often will do.
Aware of a working-jeweller population taking sanctuary about the church
in Clerkenwell, Mr Wegg is conscious of an interest in, and a respect
for, the neighbourhood. But, his sensations in this regard halt as to
their strict morality, as he halts in his gait; for, they suggest the
delights of a coat of invisibility in which to walk off safely with the
precious stones and watch-cases, but stop short of any compunction for
the people who would lose the same.
Not, however, towards the ‘shops’ where cunning artificers work in
pearls and diamonds and gold and silver, making their hands so rich,
that the enriched water in which they wash them is bought for the
refiners;--not towards these does Mr Wegg stump, but towards the poorer
shops of small retail traders in commodities to eat and drink and keep
folks warm, and of Italian frame-makers, and of barbers, and of brokers,
and of dealers in dogs and singing-birds. From these, in a narrow and
a dirty street devoted to such callings, Mr Wegg selects one dark
shop-window with a tallow candle dimly burning in it, surrounded by a
muddle of objects vaguely resembling pieces of leather and dry stick,
but among which nothing is resolvable into anything distinct, save
the candle itself in its old tin candlestick, and two preserved frogs
fighting a small-sword duel. Stumping with fresh vigour, he goes in at
the dark greasy entry, pushes a little greasy dark reluctant side-door,
and follows the door into the little dark greasy shop. It is so dark
that nothing can be made out in it, over a little counter, but another
tallow candle in another old tin candlestick, close to the face of a man
stooping low in a chair."
Mr Wegg nods to the face, ‘Good evening.’
The face looking up is a sallow face with weak eyes, surmounted by a
tangle of reddish-dusty hair. The owner of the face has no cravat on,
and has opened his tumbled shirt-collar to work with the more ease.
For the same reason he has no coat on: only a loose waistcoat over his
yellow linen. His eyes are like the over-tried eyes of an engraver, but
he is not that; his expression and stoop are like those of a shoemaker,
but he is not that.
‘Good evening, Mr Venus. Don’t you remember?’"