“There is no English equivalent for the French word flâneur. Cassell's dictionary defines flâneur as a stroller, saunterer, drifter but none of these terms seems quite accurate. There is no English equivalent for the term, just as there is no Anglo-Saxon counterpart of that essentially Gallic individual, the deliberately aimless pedestrian, unencumbered by any obligation or sense of urgency, who, being French and therefore frugal, wastes nothing, including his time which he spends with the leisurely discrimination of a gourmet, savoring the multiple flavors of his city.”

“The French have the perfect word for it: ‘ flâneur’.It means to strol around aimlessly but enjoyably, observing life and your surroundings. Baudelaire defined a flâneur as ‘a person who walks the city in order to experience it’.As Plum would say, I’m flâneuring like a motherfucker.”

“The amount of time an individual may spend pondering over what his neighbor has and what he does not, is equivalent to the amount of time the individual has lost in becoming an equal to his neighbors.”

“Years later, I learned an English word for the creature that Assef was, a word for which a good Farsi equivalent does not exist: sociopath.”

“The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world 'picturesque.”

“The French just said he was a damned nuisance. Or they would have had they the good fortune to speak English. Instead being French they were forced to say it in their own language.”