“Rumor had it that Professor Jerkwad had a history of holding classes in bars and using the school's senior class as harvesting grounds for a long string of wives who never seemed to stay married to him past age twenty-eight. Rumor also had it that a few years later he was canned from his job mid some rather unpleasant allegations, but we journalists can't succumb to rumor and conjecture when nonspecific innuendo is so much more titillating.”

“Rumor had it that he was homosexual; in reality, in recent years, he was simply a garden-variety alcoholic.”

“It was rumored she held grudges till they died of old age, then had them stuffed and mounted.”

“Rumor travels faster, but it don't stay put as long as truth. ”

“He knows different now. It's the living that chase the dead. The long bones and skulls are tumbled from their shrouds, and words like stones thrust into their rattling mouths: we edit their writings, we rewrite their lives. Thomas More had spread the rumor that Little Bilney, chained to the stake, had recanted as the fire was set. It wasn't enough for him to take Bilney's life away; he had to take his death too.”

“Although this detail has no connection whatever with the real substance of what we are about to relate, it will not be superfluous, if merely for the sake of exactness in all points, to mention here the various rumors and remarks which had been in circulation about him from the very moment when he arrived in the diocese. True or false, that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do. M. Myriel was the son of a councillor of the Parliament of Aix; hence he belonged to the nobility of the bar. It was said that his father, destining him to be the heir of his own post, had married him at a very early age, eighteen or twenty, in accordance with a custom which is rather widely prevalent in parliamentary families. In spite of this marriage, however, it was said that Charles Myriel created a great deal of talk. He was well formed, though rather short in stature, elegant, graceful, intelligent; the whole of the first portion of his life had been devoted to the world and to gallantry.”