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
It is not necessarily those lands which are the most fertile or most favored in climate that seem to me the happiest, but those in which a long struggle of adaptation between man and his environment has brought out the best qualities of both.
I think about never losing my voice, never giving in, never selling out, always keeping black, always sticking to the street. Staying neighborhood and not Hollywood.
Older women can afford to agree that femininity is a charade, a matter of colored hair, ecru lace and whalebones, the kind of slap and tat that transvestites are in love with, and no more.
What is the ideal for mental health, then? A lived, compelling illusion that does not lie about life, death, and reality; one honest enough to follow its own commandments: I mean, not to kill, not to take the lives of others to justify itself.
Luxury lies not in the richness of things, but in the absence of vulgarity
Fate's arrow, when expected, travels slow.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.