One is naturally hesitant to associate with librarians. One may be as “tolerant” as one likes in the settled security of one’s own drawing-room, but as soon as one ventures into the street and comes face-to-face with an actual librarian—with their telltale supernumerary fingers, their unnaturally sharp teeth, the giggling shrieks they use to “communicate,” their chronic dishonesty, their inability to distinguish right from wrong, their conniving sidelong lope whenever they sense danger, the infuriatingly affected way they presume to wear human clothes, their unappetizing habit, wherever they go, of smelling public telephones—well, one finds one’s armchair liberalism rather strained.

From James Kennedy.