" For ten days, all I’d had to wash in was the piss-pot, and the nearest water was the pump, five flights of narrow, winding steps down, and loneliness had been the least of my problems, if you count tiny things that bite as company. I’m not the most fastidious of men, but I don’t like it when I turn into the sort of creature I’d cross the street to avoid. "

― K.J. Parker , How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It (The Siege #2)