“Cities were always like people, showing their varying personalities to the traveler. Depending on the city and on the traveler, there might begin a mutual love, or dislike, friendship, or enmity. Where one city will rise a certain individual to glory, it will destroy another who is not suited to its personality. Only through travel can we know where we belong or not, where we are loved and where we are rejected.”

“This was how it was with travel: one city gives you gifts, another robs you. One gives you the heart’s affections, the other destroys your soul. Cities and countries are as alive, as feeling, as fickle and uncertain as people. Their degrees of love and devotion are as varying as with any human relation. Just as one is good, another is bad.”

“We rode the basement trains all night, speeding through the subterrains. I held her chin in the cup of my hand and her eyes held tight to mine, imploring me to reveal to her the mystery of that which awaits us on the pavement above, come the day we ascend from this labyrinth of trains... 'We will ride these beautiful basement trains forever,' said I, 'nothing awaits us; and as your beauty folds, so do my dreams. Come, my love, let us wander these tunnels of the endless city. This holy, endless city!”

“Womankind always seems to be able to see a dozen steps into the future, far ahead of what men are able to see. And they have strength where we do not.”

“A girl without braids is like a city without bridges.”

“I wandered everywhere, through cities and countries wide. And everywhere I went, the world was on my side.”

“It was a time I slept in many rooms, called myself by many names. I wandered through the quarters of the city like alluvium wanders the river banks. I knew every kind of joy, ascents of every hue. Mine was the twilight and the morning. Mine was a world of rooftops and love songs.”