Once I told Ha�anala about the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. . . . I told her how Abraham bargained with God for the lives of ten righteous men who might have lived there. She said to me, �Abraham should have taken the babies from the cities. The...
Eleanor was all apologies, but Sarah enjoyed seeing a bit more of the Czech countryside. You probably couldn't say that you had really seen a country if all you had seen was a city or two. You had to see where the food was grown, what the riverbanks ...
We affect one another quite enough merely by existing. Whenever the stars cross, or is it comets? fragments pass briefly from one orbit to another. On rare occasions there is total collision, but most often the two simply continue without incident, n...
The sun was beginning to set and the water was sparkling in the low light as the onshore breeze that had built up through the heat of the day rippled across the reflective surface, breaking it into a million diamonds of yellow-white light.
We treat our stone wives with much more care than they treat their warm ones, anyway. I personally dust mine once a week, and I know Khaamil gives them presents when I am not looking. These are yours - they are in your care, and you must be faithful.
The more successfully a city mingles everyday diversity of uses and users in its everyday streets, the more successfully, casually (and economically) its people thereby enliven and support well-located parks that can thus give back grace and delight ...
For you cannot live in New York City very long and not be conscious of the niceties of being rich—the city is, after all, an ecstatic exercise in merchandising—and one evening of his visit to Venezuela Sutherland sat straight up when he read a li...
A blanket could be used to tell people a thousand miles and a thousand years away hello. Greetings European people of 3013! I hope you still speak Europe and can understand not a word of what I am saying.
A brick could be used to stop war. Logically, a non-brick could be used to start a war. The most common non-brick war starter is of course a politician, which is misleading because despite being non bricks, politicians are surprisingly very brick-lik...
A brick could be used to help you become the next Great American Novelist. Hopefully after you use it to crack your own skull, and not too long after your death, the public will realize your genius and celebrate the greatness that was you.
A brick could be used to show you how much I love you. Well, maybe not a whole brick, but certainly a half a brick would be an accurate measure for the amount of love I have for you.
A brick could be used to brighten up your day, like a lampshade over the sun dangling down over your dining room table. You’d better apply sunscreen to your ice cream or it’ll likely melt in your bedpan.
A blanket could be used to make magical music. And no, I’m not talking about sex and wailing orgasms, you pervert. That’s my sister you’re thinking about. And it’s particularly disgusting and disturbing because I don’t even have a sister. �...
A brick could be used to control whole populations of people. Just get a good looking person, like a news anchor, to give it out to the masses and say soothing things with a straight face and all will be OK and the system will continue on as centrall...
The Builders are building with you in mind, dear citizen, so don’t worry your tiny mind about whether the bricks they are using are going to construct schools or prisons. They won’t tell, and you can’t tell, so just keep watching the news and i...
A blanket could help me tell you I love you. Well, it could if I did, but I don’t, so I’ll just use the blanket to go to sleep on our relationship.
His fingers skimmed down her body, over skin and satin, and she shivered, leaning into him, and she was sure they both tasted like blood and ashes and salt, but it didn't matter; the world, the city, and all it's lights and life seemed to have narrow...
You see, my son, a city is all about how you look at it...We must learn to see it in many ways, so that when one of the ways of looking hurts us, we can take refuge in another way of looking. You must always love the city.
It is as though the practices organizing a bustling city were characterized by [city practitioners', everyday citizens'] blindness. The neworks of these moving, intersecting writings compose a manifold story that has neither author nor spectator, sha...
It’s hard not to empathize with the mayor’s anger, given the injustices he’d suffered, but righteous anger rarely leads to wise policy.
It was a cruel city, but it was a lovely one; a savage city, yet it had such tenderness; a bitter, harsh, and violent catacomb of stone an steel and tunneled rock, slashed savagely with light, and roaring, fighting a constant ceaseless warfare of men...