invisiblecities2-blog

[invisiblecities2-blog]

the last words of the book...

“There are two ways of escaping it [the inferno]. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”

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Berenice (Hidden Cities 5)

“From my words you will have reached the conclusion that the real Berenice is a temporal succession of different cities, alternately just and unjust. But what I wanted to warn you about is something else: all the future Berenices are already present in this instant, wrapped one within the other, confined, crammed, inextricable.”

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Theodora (Hidden Cities 4)

“Man had finally reestablished the order of the world which he had himself upset: no other living species existed to cast any doubts.”

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Marozia (Hidden Cities 3)

“Marozia consists of two cities, the rat’s and the swallow’s; both change with time, but their relationship does not change; the second is the one about to free itself from the first.”

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Raisa (Hidden Cities 2)

“...in the volume where the philosopher says: ‘Also in Raisa, city of sadness, there runs an invisible thread that binds one living being to another for a moment, then unravels, then is stretched again between moving points as it draws new and rapid patterns so that at every second the unhappy city contains a happy city unaware of its own existence.’” 

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Olinda (Hidden Cities 1)

“...city that grows in concentric circles, like tree trunks which each year add one more ring.”

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Penthesilea (Continuous Cities 5)

“You advance for hours and it is not clear to you whether you see already in the city’s midst or still outside.”

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Cecilia (Continuous Cities 4)

“’That cannot be!’ I shouted. ‘I, too, entered a city, I cannot remember when, and since then I have gone on, deeper and deeper into its streets. But how have I managed to arrive where you say, when I was in another city, far far away from Cecilia, and I have not yet left it?’

‘The places have mingled,’ the goatherd said. ‘Cecilia is everywhere...’”

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Procopia (Continuous Cities 3)

“Not that it is easy for me to move. There are twenty-six of lodged in my room... a;; very polite people. luckily.”

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Trude (Continuous Cities 2)

“If on arriving at Trude I had not read the city’s name written n big letters, I would have thought I was landing at the same airport from which I had taken off.”

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Leonia (Continuous Cities 1)

“So you begin to wonder if Leonia’s true passion is really, as they say, the enjoyment of new and different things, and not, instead, the joy of expelling, discarding, cleansing itself of a recurrent impurity.” 

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Andria (Cities and the Sky 5)

“...the city and the sky never remain the same.”

“As for the character of Andria’s inhabitants, two virtues are worth mentioning: self-confidence and prudence. Convinced that eery innovation in the city influences the sky’s pattern, before taking any decision they calculate the risks and advantages for themselves and for the city and for all worlds.”

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Perinthia (Cities and the Sky 4)

“Perinthia’s astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong and their figures are unable to describe the heaves, or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters.”

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Thekla (Cities and the Sky 3)

“’Why is Theca’s construction taking such a long time?’

‘So that its destruction cannot begin.’”

“Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. “There is the blueprint,” they say.”

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Beersheba (Cities and the Sky 2)

“In Beersheba’s beliefs there is an element of truth and one of error. It is true that the city is accompanied by two projections of itself, one celestial and one infernal; but the citizens are mistaken about their consistency.”

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Eudoxia (Cities and the Sky 1) 

“In Eudoxia.... a carpet is preserved in which you can observe the city’s true form.”

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Argia (Cities and the Dead 4) 

“What makes Argia different than other cities is that it has earth instead of air.” 

“At night, putting your ear down to the ground, you can sometimes hear a door slum.”