“Calcutta's the only city I know where you are actively encouraged to stop strangers at random for a quick chat.”

“Where does one go in a tremendous city like Calcutta to find insider information? I recalled India's golden rule: do the opposite of what would be normal anywhere else.”

“Don't be the guy that sat spouting how greatly succesful he was to a random stranger at the airport only to find out later that random stranger was a self-made multibillinaire. OR, in shorter words...if you toot your horn too loud, you won't hear the freight train coming down the track.”

“In Moscow you can sit in an enormous restaurant where you don’t know anybody and where nobody knows you, and you don’t feel all the same that you’re a stranger. And here you know everybody and everybody knows you, and you’re a stranger... and a lonely stranger.”

“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.”

“I walked around Soho's street for over an hour, running into familiar faces but never once stopping to chat. It was then that I felt something discomforting and comforting all at once. I didn't want to be here, in this city, anymore.”