I nearly fell asleep over Dickens in English. Mind you, he's snoozeworthy at the best of times.

(from his random observations after reading David Copperfield by Charles Dickens)

In the Old Curiosity Shop I discovered that in the character of Dick Swiveller, Dickens provided P.G. Wodehouse with pretty much the whole of his oeuvre. In David Copperfield, David's bosses Spenlow and Jorkins are what must be the earliest fictional representations of good cop/bad cop.

Please, sir, I want some more.

We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me.

Was it Charles Dickens who said it was the best of times and the worst of times? That's how I feel. Either they're real good, or they're real bad. There's no in-between. We can't seem to settle on our fourth and fifth men, either. We've tried a lot of different combinations, and we're just not settling on a fourth or fifth man who can shoot a consistent score.

So new to him," she muttered, "so old to me; so strange to him, so familiar to me; so melancholy to both of us!...