The watchers below pulled in their breath all at once. The air felt suddenly shared. The man above was a word they seemed to know, though they had no… - Colum McCann

New York kept going forward precisely because it didn't give a good goddamn about what it left behind. It was like the city that Lot left, and it would dissolve if it ever began looking backward over its own shoulder. Two pillars of salt. Long Island and New Jersey.

He believed in walking beautifully, elegantly. It had to work as a kind of faith that he would get to the other side. He had fallen once while training - once exactly, so he felt it couldn't happen again, it was beyond possibility. A single flaw was necessary anyway. In any work of beauty there had to be one small thread left hanging.

There are moments we return to, now and always. Family is like water - it has a memory of what it once filled, always trying to get back to the original stream.