“I have never got a grip on when the past begins or where it ends, but if cities map the past with statues made from bronze forever frozen in one dignified position, as much as I try to make the past keep still and mind its manners, it moves and murmurs with me through every day.”

“As much as I try to make the past keep still and mind its manners, it moves and murmurs with me through every day.”

“If you have a statue in the city centre you could go past it every day on your way to school and never even notice it, right. But as soon as someone puts a traffic cone on its head, you've made your own sculpture.”

“It was true that the city could still throw shadows filled with mystifying figures from its past, whose grip on the present could be felt on certain strange days, when the streets were dark with rain and harmful ideas.”

“What if a statue of me walked past my clone frozen in thought? Which one of the two would make a better quarterback than Geno Smith?”

“And at the start of every new day, I still believed I could choose my own beginning, one that was scrubbed clean of everything past”