Holiday Cheer

Owing to a MacGuffin in the space-time continuum, I've recently come into possession of some alternative drafts of "A Christmas Carol", as written by a number of different authors. In the interests of literary scholarship, I'm presenting a number here:

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Tarantino

SCROOGE: I think you'll find - when all these festivities are over and done - I think you'll find yourself one smiling pauper. You see, right now, Bob, you've got a position. And painful as it may be, positions don't last for ever. Now that's a hard wretched fact of life, but it's a fact of life your posterior is going to have to get realistic about. This business is filled to the brim with unrealistic wretches who thought they'd be home on Christmas Day. If you mean they got fired, they did. If you mean they got time off, they didn't.

On the day itself, you might feel a slight glow. That's Christmas, humbugging you. Humbug Christmas! Much good Christmas ever did to any man. Overcome that nonsense, and a year from now, when your crippled son is dying piteously, you're gonna say, "Ebeneezer Scrooge was right"

MARLEY: I got no problem with that

SCROOGE: On Christmas Day, your posterior is in the office.

MARLEY nods

SCROOGE: Say it!

MARLEY: On Christmas Day, my posterior is in the office
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Chuck Palahniuk

Marley becomes my business partner, and after that, Marley's rattling chains in my face and saying, the common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance and deliverance, were, all, my business.

His ghostly chains piled on the floor, Marley says, "You will be haunted by three spirits"
I look about me for my own chains. You forge your own chain in life, link by link, yard by yard. You do it every day, the way you treat the people you pass by.

You treat people wrong and the chain will imprison your immortal soul. I know this because Jacob Marley knows this.

"Three spirits will visit you over the next three nights" says Marley. "You can't rebuild yourself until you truly hit bottom."

I am Ebeneezer's frightened anticipation.

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Austen

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a wretched miser in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a haunting.

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I'm sure there must be more out there...