Karen

“Here richly, with ridiculous display,
The Politician's corpse was laid away.
While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged
I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.”
― Hilaire Belloc

“Almost all languages change. A rare exception is written Icelandic, which has changed so little that modern Icelanders can read sagas written a thousand years ago, and if Leif Ericson appeared on the streets of Reykjavik he could find his way around, allowing for certain difficulties over terms like airport and quarter-pound cheeseburger.”
― Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way

“The bouncer scrutinized my face. “Do I know you?” he asked. No, I thought, but you might remember me from such Saturday-night hits as “Would you please put that punter down I’d like to arrest him,” “You can stop kicking him now, the ambulance has arrived,” and the classic “If you don’t back off right now I’m going to nick you as well.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Moon Over Soho

“I took the swab using the collection kit that I’d borrowed from Dominic who, I realized, had left the Boy Scout scale behind and was now verging on Batman levels of crazy preparedness.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Foxglove Summer