a mumbling parson stood beside the dying man; muttering crowds of onlookers.
Seconds later I heard her mumbling off the phone, and then I heard everyone in the office howling with laughter.
If that means mumbling "I believe in one God, the Father Almighty..." when I believe nothing of the kind, then so be it.
Camus cited noir as an influence, but this American crime version of existentialism is less rigorous, more vague, like the mumbling of some low-rent hood.
The only people standing still were some Latino grocery boys smoking cigarettes by a stack of milk crates and, next to them, an old black man with a whitened beard mumbling at the pavement.
