“For those who pass it without entering, the city is one thing; it is another for those who are trapped by it and never leave. There is the city where you arrive for the first time; and there is another city which you leave never to return. Each deserves a different name; perhaps I have already spoken of Irene under other names; perhaps I have spoken only of Irene.”

“We speak now or I do, and others do. You've never spoken before. You will. You'll be able to say how the city is a pit and a hill and a standard and an animal that hunts and a vessel on the sea and the sea and how we are fish in it, not like the man who swims weekly with fish but the fish with which he swims, the water, the pool. I love you, you light me, warm me, you are suns.You have never spoken before.”

“If the creek predates the city deep in time, then is it right to identify the creek solely with the city? The city has forgotten the creek, as it's forgotten those who walk its side, but the creek didn't need to be known all that long time before the city ever was. Maybe now Hogan's Creek is too steeped in history to claim an independence grounded in prehistory, because the city has too deeply poisoned it for far too long. Then again, there was all that time the creek flowed and had no name. Without a name you belong solely to yourself.”

“The brown book I carry says there is nothing stranger than to explore a city wholly different from all those one knows, since to do so is to explore a second and unsuspected self. I have found a thing stranger: to explore such a city only after one has lived in it for some time without learning anything of it.”

“There is one thing. One thing that haunts me from page one to page twenty-two. I have never spoken of it. I have never told another person”

“It was possible in this wonderful city for that nameless little boy -for any of its millions- to have a decent chance to scale the walls and achieve what they wished. Wealth, rank or an imposing name counted for nothing. The only credential the city asked was the boldness to dream. For those who did, it unlocked its gates and its treasures, not caring who they were or where they came from.”