He liked the fact that Venice had no cars. It made the city human. The streets were like veins, he thought, and the people were the blood, circulating everywhere.
Interpretation
The absence of cars in Venice enhances the humanness of the city, with its streets and people interconnecting like veins and blood.
In this quote, Patricia Highsmith reflects on the unique characteristics of Venice, emphasizing how the lack of vehicles transforms the city into a more human-centric space. The metaphor of streets as veins and people as blood suggests a profound interdependence between the environment and its inhabitants, highlighting the organic and vibrant nature of urban life without the interference of modern transportation.
In practice
This quote can be used in a travel blog to highlight the charm of cities without cars.
But there were too many points at which the other self could invade the self he wanted to preserve, and there were too many forms of invasion: certain words, sounds, lights, actions his hands or feet performed, and if he did nothing at all, heard and saw nothing, the shouting of some triumphant inner voice that shocked him and cowed him.
Then Carol slipped her arm under her neck, and all the length of their bodies touched fitting as if something had prearranged it. Happiness was like a green vine spreading through her, stretching fine tendrils, bearing flowers through her flesh. She had a vision of a pale white flower, shimmering as if seen in darkness, or through water. Why did people talk of heaven, she wondered
The freedom of affluence opposes and contradicts the freedom of community life.
I wondered, as I wondered so often when I was that age, who I was, and what exactly was looking at the face in the mirror. If the face I was looking at wasn't me, and I knew it wasn't, because I would still be me whatever happened to my face, then what was me? And what was watching?
The river flows at its own sweet will, but the flood is bound in the two banks. If it were not thus bound, its freedom would be wasted.
History can predict nothing except that great changes in human relationships will never come about in the form in which they have been anticipated.
As we manipulate everyday words, we forget that they are fragments of ancient and eternal stories, that we are building our houses with broken pieces of sculptures and ruined statues of gods as the barbarians did.
From forty years' experience of the wretched guess-work of the newspapers of what is not done in open daylight, and of their falsehood even as to that, I rarely think them worth reading, and almost never worth notice.
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