"He was small and thin..."

He was small and thin, next door to a runt, but wiry-looking, and had black eyes and hair and a moustache which pointed due east and west. He looked and acted harassed, and as soon as he shook hands with me darted off elsewhere. His wife, in spite of her New York clothes and her 1938 hair-do, looked like one of those colored pictures in the National Geographic entitled "Peasant Woman of Wczibrrcy Leading a Bear to Church."

Rex Stout
Over My Dead Body (1939)

Ironing

   I looked for ironing, but there was none. When something needs to be ironed I put it in the ironing basket. If a year goes by and the item is still in the basket I throw the item away. This is a good system since eventually I end up only with clothes that don't need ironing.

Janet Evanovich
Three To Get Deadly (1997)

Not to put too fine a point on it...

   "A girl by the name of Eva Raymond. She's a lady of leisure."
   "Professional?"
   "Well, what you might call a gifted amateur with commercial tendencies."

Erle Stanley Gardner
The Case Of The Smoking Chimney (1943)