The vultures group themselves on the roof like pigeons: tiny moron head, long necks, faces like Carnival masks, and dusty plumages, peering this and that attentively for death.
- Graham Greene
He was at once the commonest and the most remarkable product of civilization. He was nine out of ten people that one passes on a city street—and he was a hairless ape with two dozen tricks. He was the hero of a thousand romances of life and art—and he was a virtual moron, performing staidly yet absurdly a series of complicated and infinitely astounding epics over a span of threescore years.