“Your life must be an open city, with all sorts of ways to wander in.”

“Not to find one's way around a city does not mean much. But to lose one's way in a city, as one loses one's way in a forest, requires some schooling. Street names must speak to the urban wanderer like the snapping of dry twigs, and little streets in the heart of the city must reflect the times of day, for him, as clearly as a mountain valley. This art I acquired rather late in life; it fulfilled a dream, of which the first traces were labyrinths on the blotting papers in my school notebooks.”

“You shouldn't be wandering around insuch a big city all by yourself. Even if it is Seattle.”

“Daily there have to be many troubles and trials in every house, city, and country. No station in life is free of suffering and pain, both from your own, like your wife or children or household help or subjects, and from the outside, from your neighbors and all sorts of accidental trouble.”

“There is a way between voice and presence, where information flows.In disciplined silence it opens; with wandering talk it closes.”

“Sorry I'm not your boyfriend. And I mean that in all sorts of ways.”