The sea, you see, feels good for only a few days, but then it starts suffocating you. You first escape to the sea to escape yourself, but after a while that's all you find there. City is better that way. There are too many lanes and alleys. You never run into yourself there.

You just gave her an angry glance in return. It was the kind of glance that children give their parents when they know exactly the kind of total power they have over them and when the temptation to shatter them with one word, one phrase is overwhelming, but something – just the vague knowledge perhaps that the mess they create would be too great to gather – holds them back.

Ever seen a bullet-smashed windscreen? The hole at the center becomes an eye. You see less through it but you gain focus, sharpness. That's how it is -- our wounds become our eyes. Seeing outside becomes seeing inside. Listen.

My dear, you are not one person. You have many people in you, and each one can ask only some kinds of questions.

a city is all about how you look at it

for the first time I am confronted with the fact that places and people are like things: both made of memories and meaningful to us in the same way: we construct ourselves in our conversations with them.

You see, my son, a city is all about how you look at it...We must learn to see it in many ways, so that when one of the ways of looking hurts us, we can take refuge in another way of looking. You must always love the city.

We must learn to see it in many ways, so that when one of the ways of looking hurts us, we can take refuge in another way of looking. You must always love the city.

That was the strange problem with writing, you had discovered. Meaning never matched the words and words always evaded the thought.

What appears strange and complex becomes stranger and more complicated once you begin to investigate it. That's the true nature of the world.