Clouds out of control decoct anticipation. What use can any of us have for moons? The miracle of order has run out and I am left in an unmiraculous city where anything may happen.
We felt so small with the city lights stretching forever below us, and we yelled at the top of our lungs because we were just these small humans but we felt more longing than could ever fit inside us.
It occurs to me that my thinking has been faulty: we do not feel God's absence. We feel the absence of all that is lost to God, that which has set itself apart and refuses to return, believing itself to be in exile.
They built a city of their dreams, with a thriving gift economy and vibrant culture that encouraged all participants to let loose their wildest, most glorious freak. They weren’t protesting; they were celebrating.
Laughing like crazy the child goes back to the city gives birth to monsters creates earthquakes hairy women run naked old folks who look like fetuses laugh and smoke.
One of the the things she most liked about the city -apart from all its obvious attractions, the theatre, the galleries, the exhilarating walks by the river- was that so few people ever asked you personal questions.
To put a city in a book, to put the world on one sheet of paper -- maps are the most condensed humanized spaces of all...They make the landscape fit indoors, make us masters of sights we can't see and spaces we can't cover.
The ocean exerts an inexorable pull over sea people wherever they are-in a bright-lit, inland city or the dead center of a desert-and when they feel the tug there is no choice but somehow to reach it and stand at its immense, earth-dissolving edge, s...
Bat stood in the open door and said "I am a crime scene unit detective from the New York City Police Department, you heinous fucking mongoloid, and there is nothing I cannot do.
As the head of an expedition, you can't pussyfoot around being polite to everyone. You have to show your teeth once in a while; a little growling goes a long way.
Through a strange kind of geographic arrogance, Europeans like to think that the world was a silent, dark, unknown place until they trooped out and discovered it.
The ability to tell a good route from a terrible one is a valuable skill when leading an expedition. Unfortunately for us all, it was a skill I did not possess.
As far as I was concerned, a little danger of head-shrinking is a small price to pay in return for a people who have remained true to an ancient code.
Because from the day I met her I'd known I wanted to be part of any world she belonged to. Did that make me crazy? Or was my heart too easily conquered?
Which was just well: goodbyes had never been my strong suit anyway, and lately my life had felt like an unbroken series of them. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
And once we reach the city, my stylist will dictate my look for the opening ceremonies tonight anyway. I just hope I get one who doesn't think nudity is the last word in fashion.
He was high up now, gazing across to where Montmartre itself gazed out over the city. He was swept along in the wind, admiring the twin steeples of Notre-Dame as he passed, along with the dogged, devilish gargoyles of St. Jacques.
The intercom buzzes while you're changing your shirt. You push the Talk button: "Who is it?" "Narcotics squad. We're soliciting donations for children all over the world who have no drugs.
You never stopped thinking of yourself as a writer biding his time in the Department of Factual Verification. But between the job and the life there wasn't much time left over for emotion recollected in tranquillity.
I also had a dim idea that if I walked the streets of New York by myself all night something of the city's mystery and magnificence might rub off on me at last. But I gave it up.
The highways of American cities are an enduring testimony to our acceptance of ugliness
