If you look at a lot of traditional societies, they're all organized along what we might call anarchist guidelines, but it's not like the Zapatistas were reading European social theory.

There are disasters that are entirely manmade, but none that are entirely natural.

A lone walker is both present and detached, more than an audience but less than a participant. Walking assuages or legitimizes this alienation.

When you say 'mother' or 'father' you describe three different phenomena. There is the giant who made you and loomed over your early years; there is whatever more human-scale version might have been possible to perceive later and maybe even befriend; and there is the internalized version of the parent with whom you struggle- to appease, to escape, to be yourself, to understand and be understood by- and they make up a chaotic and contradictory trinity.

Too many of us seem far too fond of narratives of our powerlessness, maybe because powerlessness lets us off the hook... But we don't need everyone on board; we don't need one magic person in office; we need ourselves. To act. It's the wind, not the weathervanes.

A city always contains more than any inhabitant can know, and a great city always makes the unknown and the possible spurs to the imagination.

I see disaster everywhere; I also […] see generosity and resistance everywhere.