*

In the city, the best approach is to believe only what your own eyes tell you. But not even that is infallible. For few things are ever what they seem to be, especially here, with so much to absorb at every step, with so many things that defy understanding. Whatever you see has the potential to wound you, to make you less that you are, as if merely by seeing a thing some part of yourself were taken away from you.

—In the Country of Last Things.
Paul Auster.