Quotes from Robert Schnakenberg

Walt Whitman: "Hold me up, I want to shit.

Not surprisingly, Dickens was also something of a neat freak. He brushed his thinning hair hundreds of times a day, even whipping out a comb in the middle of a dinner party if he sensed a single strand out of place.

Just about the only affliction Mesmerism seemed powerless to cure was the one that plagued Dickens the most: asthma. So he found relief the old-fashioned way: He took opium.