"Dialectic of flânerie: on one side, the man who feels himself viewed by all and sundry as a true suspect and, on the other side, the man who is utterly undiscoverable, the hidden man. Presumably, it is this dialectic that is developed in 'The Man of the Crowd'"
-- Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project (Harvard UP, 1999)

"I think it was around the seventeenth century that Sicilian noblemen had a cunning contrivance built into their houses, a sirocco room, a room in which to take refuge when the sirocco blew. Or was it a room in which to take refuge, in which to shelter from the thought of death? But I don’t suppose such rooms were really much use against the sirocco — before it can be felt in the air the sirocco has already taken possession of our minds, our knees."
-- Leonardo Sciascia, The Moro Affair (1978)