“dear milena, I wish the world were ending tomorrow. then I could take the next train, arrive at your doorstep in vienna, and say: “come with me, milena.." -kafka
"When a man rides a long time through wild regions he feels the desire for a city. Finally he comes to lsidora, a city where the buildings have spiral staircases encrusted with spiral seashells, where perfect telescopes and violins are made, where the foreigner hesitating between two women always encounters a third, where cockfights degenerate into bloody brawls among the bettors. He was thinking of all these things when he desired a city Isidora, therefore, is the city of his dreams: with one difference. The dreamed-of city contained him as a young man; he arrives at Isidora in his old age. In the square there is the wall where the old men sit and watch the young go by; he is seated in a row with them. Desires are already memories.'
- italo Calvino, Invisible Cities