Narrative: Legal tender

– Roland Barthes

‘You have a quarrel on hand, I see,’ said I, ‘with some of the algebraists of Paris; but proceed.’

– Edgar Allan Poe, The Purloined Letter

The language of this country being always upon the flux, the Struldbruggs of one age do not understand those of another, neither are they able after two hundred years to hold any conversation (farther than by a few general words) with their neighbours the mortals, and thus they lie under the disadvantage of living like foreigners in their own country.

– Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

It seems to me the further east you go the more unpunctual are the trains.

– Bram Stoker, Dracula