"God-damn! keep your trap shut," he said and blew a suffocating plume of corn whiskey breath into the minister's face. "They ain't nobody going to he… - Leane Zugsmith

Mrs. H., the seamstress, and her mysterious husband whom nobody had everseen, it was assumed that he was bedridden, since the dressmaker frequently would excuse herself, saying, "Would you mind if I just take a look in at Mr. H?" There really was no Mr. H. The backroom contained nothing but a bed, and a chiffonier, on whose flat top stood a decanter, bearing the inscription "Gin" and wearing around it's neck a tag, "Henry Hanse." No one and nothing else occupied the room but an easel; on it reposed a portrait of a youngish man wearing a very tall collar and a large stickpin in his tie.

More women than men came down the gang-plank, many of them wearing trousers with ill-fitting overcoats buttoned around them. In the harsh noon light, they appeared to have a curious kinship. They all looked as though something had been chilled inside of them and then hollowed out. Although some were shouting, like the men and women on the pier, although some were hysterical, like the men and women crowding around the plank, although some were dazed, there was a difference between them and the persons who awaited them. Some cheerful, recognizable human quality had been subtracted from them. They were the second group of survivors from the Matrix, the pleasure ship that had gone to the bottom before it had even reached Caribbean waters. (beginning of "To Be Alive")

Bart, the hairdresser, sassed the customers when he wasnt clowning or reciting brash tales about his private life. The customers seemed to enjoy it.