When I Want An Opinion, I'll Get

When New Yorkers Tell One About The Dangers Of Their City, The Muggings, The Dinner Parties To Which No One Turns Up For Fear Of Being Attacked On The Way, The Traffic Snarl-ups, The Bland Indifference Of The City Cops, They Are Unmistakably Bragging.

Seattle Was Built Out On Pilings Over The Sea, And At High Tide The Whole City Seemed To Come Afloat Like A Ship Lifting Free From A Mud Berth And Swaying In Its Chains.

Life, As The Most Ancient Of All Metaphors Insists, Is A Journey; And The Travel Book, In Its Deceptive Simulation Of The Journey's Fits And Starts, Rehearses Life's Own Fragmentation. More Even Than The Novel, It Embraces The Contingency Of Things.

We Need – More Urgently Than Architectural Utopias, Ingenious Traffic Disposal Systems, Or Ecological Programmes – To Comprehend The Nature Of Citizenship, To Make Serious Imaginative Assessment Of That Special Relationship Between The Self And The City; Its Unique Plasticity, Its Privacy And Freedom.

Travel. It Was An Intransitive Verb. It Didn't Involve Any Destinations. It Was Going To The Going's Sake, To Be Anywhere But Where You Were, With Motion Itself As The Only Object.