Burglar Quotes

This one sounds rather gay. A Fresno, California house burglar rubbed spices over the body of a sleeping man before using an 8 inch long sausage to slap the face of another snoozing resident. Antonio Vasquez fled but was caught in a nearby field after police found his wallet and ID in the victims' home. The sausage was eaten by a dog after Vasquez tossed it away. ~ Leonard Birdsong

I don't like raccoons. They look ... shifty, with their little burglar masks and everything. Also, they carry rabies. Can I catch rabies? Probably not. All the same, it sounds gruesome - and I think we all know that cute, fuzzy woodland creatures are not to be trusted on general principle. ~ Cherie Priest

Once, before leaving on vacation, I copied an entire page from an Alice Munro story and left it in my typewriter, hoping a burglar might come upon it and mistake her words for my own. That an intruder would spend his valuable time reading, that he might be impressed by the description of a crooked face, was something I did not question, as I believed, and still do, that stories save you. ~ Jincy Willett

There's gonna be a lot of slow singing and flower bringing
If my burglar alarm starts ringing ~ The Notorious B.I.G.

Now I felt exposed, on display like a puppy in a pet store window, strip steak in a butcher case, burglar caught in a flashlight beam, in a word, naked. ~ Dennis Vickers

Your money, or your life. We know what to do when a burglar makes this demand of us, but not when God does. ~ Mignon McLaughlin

A great measure of a man is how he reacts to a midnight awakening when there's no fire or burglar in sight. ~ Kate Jacobs

Self doubt,
It sneaks up on you like a cat burglar. Chase it out of your head like a crazy homeowner with a bat – there's nothing good that comes from letting thieves into your house. Self doubt is not your reality – it's your fear. ~ Colleen Ferrary Bader

Who is he anyhow, an actor?"
"No."
"A dentist?"
" ... No, he's a gambler." Gatsby hesitated, then added cooly: "He's the man who fixed the World Series back in 1919."
"Fixed the World Series?" I repeated.
The idea staggered me. I remembered, of course, that the World Series had been fixed in 1919, but if I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as something that merely happened, the end of an inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people
with the singlemindedness of a burglar blowing a safe.
"How did he happen to do that?" I asked after a minute.
"He just saw the opportunity."
"Why isn't he in jail?"
"They can't get him, old sport. He's a smart man. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

No burglar wastes his time burgling authors. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Too often, the opportunity knocks, but by the time you push back the chain, push back the bolt, unhook the two locks and shut off the burglar alarm, it's too late. ~ Rita Coolidge

I once compiled a list of events that frightened her, and it was quite comprehensive: very loud snoring; low-flying aircraft; church bells; fire engines; trains; buses and lorries; thunder; shouting; large cars; most medium-sized cars; noisy small cars; burglar alarms; fireworks, especially crackers; loud radios; barking dogs; whinnying horses; nearby silent horses; cows in general; megaphones; sheep; corks coming out of sparkling wine bottles; motorcycles, even very small ones; balloons being popped; vacuum cleaners (not being used by her); things being dropped; dinner gongs; parrot houses; whoopee cushions; chiming doorbells; hammering; bombs; hooters; old-fashioned alarm clocks; pneumatic drills; and hairdryers (even those used by her). ~ John Cleese

Ignorant: a state of not knowing what a pronoun is, or how to find the square root of 27.4, and merely knowing childish and useless things like which of the seventy almost identical-looking species of the purple sea snake are the deadly ones, how to treat the poisonous pith of the Sago-sago tree to make a nourishing gruel, how to foretell the weather by the movements of the tree-climbing Burglar Crab, how to navigate across a thousand miles of featureless ocean by means of a piece of string and a small clay model of your grandfather, how to get essential vitamins from the liver of the ferocious Ice Bear, and other such trivial matters. It's a strange thing that when everyone becomes educated, everyone knows about the pronoun but no one knows about the Sago-sago. ~ Terry Pratchett

Guess the question is, how paranoid do you want to be? How many guns does it take to make you feel safe? And how do you simultaneously keep them loaded and close at hand, but still out of reach of your inquisitive children or grandchildren? Are you sure you wouldn't do better with a really good burglar alarm? It's true you have to remember to set the darn thing before you go to bed, but think of this - if you happened to mistake your wife or live-in partner for a crazed drug addict, you couldn't shoot her with a burglar alarm. ~ Stephen King

There are times ... when any visitor - in person, by phone, by mail - is an intruder, a burglar, a space hogger, an oxygen taker, a chaos maker, a conflict inducer, a mood chaser, and a total drag. ~ Toni Cade Bambara

Crime in the cities is very discouraging. Apartment house dwellers have locks, bolts, chains and bars on their doors. It takes a tenant longer to get out than a burglar to get in. ~ Sam Ewing

Don't throw a baby at anything - even a burglar. ~ Eugene Mirman

Owners who buy aggressive dogs for security may be kidding themselves: The chances that the victim of a fatal dog attack will be a burglar or human attacker are 1-in-177. The odds that the victim will be a child are 7-in-10. ~ Jon Katz

It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people- with the single mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier. ~ George Bernard Shaw

If there is not folly in the world, then the world itself is folly. You must understand that mistakes are not always regrets. ~ Paul Tobin

The faults of the burglar are the qulaities of the financier. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I had to stop sneaking around girls' houses like some kind of dumb-ass cat burglar. Clearly it got me nowhere good. ~ Kieran Scott

God is a sort of burglar. As a young man you knock him down; as an old man you try to conciliate him, because he may knock you down. ~ Herbert Beerbohm Tree

The Saudis have never shown any respect for human rights, either now or in the past. Even a petty burglar faces having one of his hands chopped off. The liberal press in America prefers to ignore all this, although they don't hesitate to blacken the reputation of Iran. ~ Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

Free is not how many of our citizens feel - with our overstocked medicine cabinets, burglar alarms, vast ghettos, and drug culture. Eighteen hundred New Yorkers are murdered every year by their fellow citizens in a city whose police department is larger than the standing army of many nations. The adventure went sour. ~ Stanley Hauerwas

I'm a cat burglar. ~ Sarah Monette

Thieving was not a sheer absurdity. It was a form of human industry, perverse indeed, but still an industry exercised in an industrious world; it was work undertaken for the same reason as the work in potteries, in coal mines, in fields, in tool-grinding shops. It was labour, whose practical difference from the other forms of labour consisted in the nature of its risk, which did not lie in ankylosis, or lead poisoning, or fire-damp, or gritty dust, but in what may be briefly defined in its own special phraseology as "Seven years' hard". Chief Inspector Heat was, of course, not insensible to the gravity of moral differences. But neither were the thieves he had been looking after. They submitted to the severe sanction of a morality familiar to Chief Inspector Heat with a certain resignation. They were his fellow citizens gone wrong because of imperfect education, Chief Inspector Heat believed; but allowing for that difference, he could understand the mind of a burglar, because, as a matter of fact, the mind and the instincts of a burglar are of the same kind as the mind and the instincts of a police officer. Both recognize the same conventions, and have a working knowledge of each other's methods and of the routine of their respective trades. They understand each other, which is advantageous to both, and establishes a sort of amenity in their relations. Products of the same machine, one classed as useful and the other as noxious, they take the machine for granted in different w ~ Joseph Conrad

When you are discovered by a householder - with revolver - in his parlor at half-past three in the morning, it is surely an injudicious move to lay stress on your proficiency as a burglar. The householder may be supposed to take that for granted. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Monsieur, please stay back. You are old and frail, and I would not have you hurt in this clash. ~ Paul Tobin

In that one stolen second, I considered the Glebe girl. She entered my mind like a burglar, them vanished again, taking nothing. It was like the humiliation of the past had been dragged instantly from my back and left somewhere on the ground. ~ Markus Zusak

My letters seeking a job, though truthful, diminished the full truth. Face would blanch if the facts had been complete: "Dear Sir," I thought. "Do you have a position for a journeyman burglar, con man, forger and car thief; also with experience as armed robber, pimp, card cheat and several other things. I smoked marijuana at twelve (in the 40's) and shot heroin at sixteen. I have no experience with LSD and methedrine. They came to popularity since my imprisonment. I've buggered pretty young boys and feminine homosexuals (but only when locked up away from women). In the idiom of jails, prisons and gutters (some plush gutters) I'm a motherfucker! Not literally, for I don't remember my mother. In my world the term, used as I used it, is a boast of being hell on wheels, outrageously unpredictable, a virtuoso of crime. Of course by being a motherfucker in that world I'm a piece of garbage in yours. Do you have a job? ~ Edward Bunker

Miriam will never know what kind of dog attacked her, will imagine a Doberman or a German shepherd with snarling, angry teeth despite the fact she bears neither bite marks nor broken skin. It will never cross her mind that the dog was a beagle and that she was knocked over from a surprise more than force. The children of the house she fled will use the incident to convince their parents to keep the dog, which had been on the verge of being given away for its propensity to shit at the slightest hint of thunder it having been sequestered in the garage that night because of a stormy forecast. The family will never know what manner of burglar their fog deflected, will imagine a scruffy, heavy-set man with scars and a limp groping the family jewelery. It will never cross their minds that their intruder was am upper middle-class wife and mother of two who would have had eyes only for their Chinese teakettle. ~ Myla Goldberg

Burglars are getting very clever these days. Last night, my wife woke me up, "Darling! Darling! There's a burglar downstairs!!" So I go down, check every room and don't find anyone. Then I realized I don't have a wife and when I went back upstairs my bed and TV were gone. ~ Steve Evans

Water began to drip steadily through the dormer window. Outside, in the treacherous city, a thaw had come, giving the streets the unreliable consistency of wet cardboard. Slow masses of whiteness slid from sloping, grey-slate roofs. The footprints of delivery vans corrugated the slush. First light; and the dawn chorus began, chattering of road-drills, chirrup of burglar alarms, trumpeting of wheeled creatures clashing at corners, the deep whirr of a large olive-green garbage eater, screaming radio-voices from a wooden painter's cradle clinging to the upper storey of a Free House, roar of the great wakening juggernauts rushing awesomely down this long but narrow pathway. From beneath the earth came tremors denoting the passage of huge subterranean worms that devoured and regurgitated human beings, and from the skies the thrum of choppers and the screech of higher, gleaming birds. ~ Salman Rushdie

Tamlin thought about what he'd heard during his rescue and said, "And in addition to his talent of imitating father's voice, Talbot has become some sort of monster." "Well," she(Tazi)said. "In a manner of speaking, yes"
"And you just returned from training as a master assassin?"
"That is not how I'd describe myself."
"Cat burglar, then. Just like mother."
Well, yes. If you must be rude about it."
"And even the chambermaid has divine powers?"
"That's right" Tazi said. "That, and she's actually our sister"
"Our sister..." "It appears that everyone I know has become some sort of storybook hero--" he sighed-- "And all I can boast is 'most often kidnapped.'"
"Now would be a bad time to tell you about Larajin's twin brother?" Tazi asked. She raised a solemn eyebrow, but the quirk upon her lips was all mischief
"Now you're making things up"
She kept smiling, but shook her head.
"Next you'll tell me he's an elf"
Tamlin strove not to take offense at her wild laughter, even though it continued long after they had turned off the streets of Selgaunt and rumbled through the gate to Stormweather Towers. ~ Dave Gross

Maybe knowledge is power, but it's damned hard to think a burglar to death. ~ Lois Greiman

There was this book Dad used to read to me every night called "The Giving Tree." It was a really good book, but the back of it had a picture of the author, this guy named Shel Silverstein.
But Shel Silverstein looks more like a burglar or a pirate than a guy who should be writing books for kids.
Dad must have known that picture kind of freaked me out, because one night after I got out of bed, Dad said: "IF YOU GET OUT OF BED AGAIN TONIGHT, YOU'LL PROBABLY RUN INTO SHEL SILVERSTEIN IN THE HALLWAY."
That really did the trick, Ever since then, I STILL don't get out of bed at night, even if I really need to use the bathroom. ~ Jeff Kinney

The soldier is convinced that a certain indefinitely extendable time period is accorded him before he is killed, the burglar before he is caught, men in general, before they must die. That is the amulet which preserves individuals - and sometimes populations - not from danger, but from the fear of danger, in reality from the belief in danger, which in some cases allows them to brave it without being brave. Such a confidence, just as unfounded, supports the lover who counts on a reconciliation, a letter. ~ Marcel Proust

Looking for an honest politician is like looking for an ethical burglar. ~ H.L. Mencken

Ab figured that the chance of his recognising it would be about the same as a burglar recognising a dollar watch that happened to get caught for a minute on his vest button five years ago ~ William Faulkner

If you ask any ordinary reader which of Dickens's proletarian characters he can remember, the three he is almost certain to mention are Bill Sykes, Sam Weller and Mrs. Gamp. A burglar, a valet and a drunken midwife-not exactly a representative cross-section of the English working class. ~ George Orwell

A rumble gurgled through the space between them.
"Was that you?"
She looked down. "Was that me?"
"That noise. It sounded like a growl."
Well according to you, I am a ferocious car burglar. ~ Candis Terry

After a burglary of all her most valued and treasured possessions, Winston Churchill's aging mother wrote: "That burglar relieved me of an obsession. For years, I've had to take houses big enough to hold all these bibelots. I am almost grateful to him." ~ Anne Sebba

I never saw her a burglar prying my windows open with a jimmy to steal whatever she found inside. ~ Ellen Miller

She was hurt to find life made up of so many little things. At first she believed most faithfully that they had a deeper meaning and a coherent larger purpose; but after a while she saw to her dismay that the deeper and larger things were merely shadows cast by the small. So she buried the whole great treasure of winged dreams and iridescent shades under an oak-tree in the farthest corner of her heart, and planted a bush of wild roses over it. A small grave of dreams. Secretly and silently she buried them, a little ashamed, as a burglar might be who had long pursued some gleaming ruby necklace, and, having by infinite stealth and risk obtained it, found that it was red glass. ~ Barbara Newhall Follett

Why do you think Lara is Lara Casnoff, and Mrs. Casnoff is Mrs. Casnoff?" Elodie whispered as she worked her magic on the enchanted door. "It's her family name, right? So shouldn't she be Miss Casnoff? Or Ms.?"
Of all the things to wonder about, that's what you're focused on? Her marital status?
"It's weird, that's all I'm saying," she hissed in reply.
You know you can talk to me in my head, right? You don't have to talk out loud and make everyone think I'm a crazy person. Just FYI.
"The only time I can talk is when I'm in your body, so sue me, I'm taking advantage of that."
Before we could snipe at each other anymore, the door suddenly gave way. Pushing it open, Elodie dashed inside, closing the door behind her. Lara Casnoff's office was the total opposite of Mrs. Casnoff's, complete with soaring bookcases and a heavy wooden desk so brightly polished that I could see myself in it.
"Any idea on where we should start?" Elodie whispered.
The desk, I finally said. It'll be locked, and if it's anything like Mrs. Casnoff's desk, magic won't work on it. There's a nail in my pocket. Get it out, and I'll talk you through jimmying the lock.
Elodie's disdain flooded over me, but she got the nail and went to work on the lock. "Were you a burglar in the real world?" she muttered as she worked. ~ Rachel Hawkins

But he's nice," Barby objected.

Tom Bishop smiled without humor. "Most pleasant and interesting man I ever knew was a burglar. ~ John Blaine

time. He also discovered that the burglar was still inside. It was this discovery that ultimately brought Detective Harry Bosch and his partner, Jerry Edgar, to the Three Kings Pawnshop. ~ Michael Connelly

If I can go from burglar for the government to talk show host, you can go from entertainer to congressman. ~ G. Gordon Liddy

But she was already in. Gareth couldn't help but stand back in admiration. Hyacinth Bridgerton was clearly a natural born athlete.
Either that or a cat burglar. ~ Julia Quinn

I have wished you dead and myself dead. How could it be otherwise. I have broken into you like a burglar. And you've set your dogs on me. And a pile of broken sticks. A child could kick. I have climbed you like a monument, gasoing, For the exercise and the view, And leaned over the railing at the top ... Strong and warm, the summer wind. ~ Alicia Ostriker

Modern man threw a brick through his own window in order to sell himself a burglar alarm. ~ Allen Carr

I have always been paranoid about waking people up. When I was younger and would come home late, I would take about twenty minutes to get from the driveway into my bed. I tiptoed up the walk, slid my house key in the door very slowly, took my shoes off outside, and crept upstairs to the bathroom like a burglar. Often I wouldn't even flush until morning, preferring to let my business simmer overnight rather than wake somebody up with the sound of it zooming through walls on its way out of the house. ~ Neil Pasricha

To put this another way, burglary requires architecture. Not infrequently, only because of some aspect of a building's design is burglary even possible. A blind spot, a vulnerability, a badly placed window, a shadowy alcove, an unlocked skylight, a useful proximity between one structure and the next - the burglar sees this opportunity and pounces. ~ Geoff Manaugh

When the enterprising burglar isn't burgling; When the cut-throat isn't occupied in crime; He loves to hear the little brook a-gurgling; And listen to the merry village chime. ~ W.S. Gilbert

For the burglar, every building is infinite, endlessly weaving back into itself through meshed gears made of fire escapes and secondary stairways, window frames and screened-in porches, pet doors and ventilation shafts, everything interpenetrating, everything mixed together in a fantastic knot. Rooms and halls coil together like dragons inside of dragons or snakes eating their own tails, rooms opening onto every other room in the city. For the burglar, doors are everywhere. Where we see locks and alarms, they see M. C. Escher. ~ Geoff Manaugh

Uncle alone in the house with the children said he'd dress up to amuse them. After a long wait, as he did not appear, they went down and saw a masked man putting the table silver into a bag. 'Oh, Uncle,' they cried in delight. 'Yes, isn't my make-up good?' said Uncle, taking his mask off. Thus goes the Hegelian syllogism of humour. Thesis: Uncle made himself up as a burglar (a laugh for the children); antithesis: it WAS a burglar (a laugh for the reader); synthesis: it still was Uncle (fooling the reader). ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Who were these people, these specially selected tenants? They were mothers and fathers and children. A dressmaker, a secretary, an inventor, a doctor, a judge. And, oh yes, one was a bookie, one was a burglar, one was a bomber, and one was a mistake. ~ Ellen Raskin

Our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot," he wrote. The content of the medium is just "the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind." P 4 ~ Nicholas Carr

She didn't want to be one of those old ladies obsessed with death, hearing it in every tick of the clock and creak of the floorboards, as if it were prowling around the house like a burglar ~ Stewart O'Nan

Would you be so obliging as to tell me whose house this is?' "`Mine,' said the burglar, `May I present you to my wife? ~ G.K. Chesterton

Tas pulled himself up over the porch railing with the skill of a burglar. The kender slipped over to the door and peered up and down the bridge-walk. Seeing no one on it, he motioned to the others. Then he studied the lock and smiled to himself in satisfaction. The kender slid something out of one of his pouches. Within seconds, the door of Tika's house swung open. "Come in," he said, playing host. ~ Margaret Weis

The worst part of it is you don't know if he's barking at an owl, the moon or a burglar!"
"That's one of the drawbacks of a limited vocabulary! ~ Charles M. Schulz

Things aren't right. If a burglar breaks into your home and you shoot him, he can sue you. For what, restraint of trade? ~ Bill Maher

Mr. Baggins was still officially their expert burglar and investigator. If he liked to risk a light, that was his affair. They would wait in the tunnel for his report. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Put in hours and hours of planning, figure everything down to the last detail, then what? Burglar alarms start going off all overthe place for no sensible reason. A gun fires of its own accord and a man is shot. And a broken-down old house no good for anything but chasing kids has to trip over us. Blind accidents. What can you do against blind accidents? ~ Ben Maddow

I NEVER lost as much but twice,
And that was in the sod;
Twice have I stood a beggar
Before the door of God!
Angels, twice descending,
Reimbursed my store.
Burglar, banker, father,
I am poor once more! ~ Emily Dickinson

Do you believe in God? Perhaps you aren't old enough. The reason old people believe in God is because they've given up believing in anything else, and one can't exist without faith in something ... God is a sort of burglar. As a young man you knock him down; as an old man, you try to conciliate him because he may knock you down. Moral: don't grow old. ~ Hesketh Pearson

I hate watching people blow all operational security, and spew their guts like a teenage burglar, drunk in a bar. We're professionals, for Christ's sake, and she's just a prole. ~ Bruce Sterling

Now that I thought of it, perhaps whacking the burglar wasn't quite ... necessary.
It occurred to me that he said "Hi." I thought he did, anyway. He said hi. Do burglars usually
greet their victims? Hi. I'd like to rob your house. Does that work for you? ~ Kristan Higgins

It is the first time the burglar has been appointed as caretaker. ~ Gough Whitlam

I am like a burglar that can't get away, but must go on miserably burgling the same house day after day.
- Bilbo Baggins ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

One time, a burglar came to my apartment, so we called the police. My son was here, so I think they left before they tried to steal something. So the police come to my apartment, and they say, 'Oh my God, did they steal everything?' I was like, 'No, it was like that!' ~ Carine Roitfeld

He might have stolen her breath the first time they kissed, but there and then - stealthy like a cat burglar - he was trying to steal her heart. ~ Gail McHugh

Gya!! Stay away from me, weirdo! I'll press the burglar alarm! ~ Peach-Pit

And when she said, What do you want to be when you grow up? some kid said, A good burglar, and we all laughed, and she said, Why not an anarchist?--that's a burglar with self-respect. ~ Joseph McElroy

I have read of a gentleman who owned a so fine house in London, and when he went for months of summer to Switzerland and lock up his house, some burglar came and broke window at back and got in. Then he went and made open the shutters in front and walk out and in through the door, before the very eyes of the police. Then he have an auction in that house, and advertise it, and put up big notice; and when the day come he sell off by a great auctioneer all the goods of that other man who own them. Then he go to a builder, and he sell him that house, making an agreement that he pull it down and take all away within a certain time. And your police and other authority help him all they can. And when that owner come back from his holiday in Switzerland he find only an empty hole where his house had been. This was all done en règle; and in our work we shall be en règle too. We shall not go so early that the policemen who have then little to think of, shall deem it strange; but we shall go after ten o'clock, when there are many about, and such things would be done were we indeed owners of the house. ~ Bram Stoker

There's a kind of gap between what I think is real and what's really real , I get this feeling like some kind of little something other is there somewhere inside me ... ..like a burglar is in the house hiding in a closet ... and it comes out every once in a while and messes up whatever order or logic I've established the way a magnet can make a machine go crazy ~ Haruki Murakami

A brick is a good object to hide a house key under. No burglar will be able to get to your key, especially if you hide it under the first brick the mason's lay when constructing your house. ~ Jarod Kintz

Toward the end of her life a burglar broke into her house and pistol-whipped her. She was an elderly woman by then, and it sent her into a downward spiral. When she was in the hospital dying, I called, and she asked me not to come and see her; she wanted me to remember her as she was. I felt I had to honor her request. As we talked, she told me she was wearing the four-leaf clover necklace I had given her. Barbara [Stanwyck] was cremated wearing it, and her ashes were scattered over Lone Pine. The fact that a piece of me remained with her at the end was and is some consolation for her loss. ~ Robert Wagner

Even a burglar hesitates to go back for more. ~ Isoroku Yamamoto

Go face the fire at sea, or the cholera in your friend's house, or the burglar in your own, or what danger lies in the way of duty, knowing you are guarded by the cherubim of Destiny. If you believe in Fate to your harm, believe it, at least, for your good. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

792. Thief.-- N. thief, robber, homo trium literarum, pilferer, rifler, filcher, plagiarist.

spoiler, depredator, pillager, marauder; harpy, shark, land-shark, falcon, moss-trooper, bushranger, Bedouin, brigand, freebooter, bandit, thug, dacoit, pirate, corsair, viking, Paul Jones; buccan-eer, -ier; piqu-, pick-eerer; rover, ranger, privateer, filibuster; rapparee, wrecker, picaroon; smuggler, poacher, plunderer, racketeer.

highwayman, Dick Turpin, Claude Duval, Macheath, knight of the road, foodpad, sturdy beggar; abductor, kidnapper.

cut-, pick-purse; pick-pocket, light-fingered gentry; sharper; card-, skittle-sharper; crook; thimble-rigger; rook, Greek, blackleg, leg, welsher, defaulter; Autolycus, Cacus, Barabbas, Jeremy Diddler, Robert Macaire, artful dodger, trickster; swell mob, chevalier d'industrie; shop-lifter.

swindler, peculator; forger, coiner, counterfeiter, shoful; fence, receiver of stolen goods, duffer; smasher.

burglar, housebreaker; cracks-, mags-man; Bill Sikes, Jack Sheppard, Jonathan Wild, Raffles, cat burglar.

[Roget's Thesaurus, 1941 Revision] ~ Peter Mark Roget

Ten years ago, when I was living in a small flat above an off-licence in SW1, I learned that the big house next door had been bought by the wife of the dictator of Nicaragua, Anastasio Somoza Debayle. The street was obviously going down in the world, what with the murder of the nanny Sandra Rivett by that nice Lord Lucan at number 44, and I moved out a few months later. I never met Hope Somoza, but her house became notorious in the street for a burglar alarm that went off with surprising frequency, and for the occasional parties that would cause the street to be jammed solid with Rolls - Royce, Mercedes-Benz and Jaguar limousines. Back in Managua, her husband 'Tacho' had taken a mistress, Dinorah, and Hope was no doubt trying to keep her spirits up. ~ Salman Rushdie