“When people keep telling you that you can’t do a thing, you kind of like to try it. ”

“You become a cop and they teach you about protecting people and keeping them safe. But they don’t tell you how it rips your heart out when you realize you can’t do it. You can’t save everybody.”

“The interesting thing about cities isn’t what they do when people are looking,” Ben says. “It’s what they do when they think nobody’s looking. Like, the shit the city is proud of? The shining skyscrapers downtown, the sports stadiums, the public art? You can’t judge a city by that. That only tells you what the rich people are doing on a good day. It’s what people do on a bad day—a bad day when there are no security cameras watching—that tells you what you really want to know. It’s how people act during a blackout, a hurricane, or a siege that tells you the truth about a city.”

“You can’t put much on paper before you betray your secret self, try as you will to keep things civil.”

“I want to be the kind of person who can do that. Move on and forgive people and be healthy and happy. It seems like an easy thing to do in my head. But it's not so easy when you try it in real life.”

“Watching people is a good hobby, but you have to be careful about it. You can’t let people catch you staring at them. If people catch you, they treat you like a first-class criminal. And maybe they’re right to do that. Maybe it should be a crime to try to see things about people they don’t want you to see.”