You have been bitten by the travel bug, which is very suitable for your time of life, and is a passion akin to falling in love, or fighting an ideali… - Robert Sheckley

But still, we encounter difficulties. The nature of the city operates against us. Venice owes its very existence to the art of illusion—which is one of the Black Arts. It is a city of mirrors; the canals reflect the buildings, the windows reflect the canals. Distances slide and twist, earth and water interpenetrate. Venice advertises its falsehoods and conceals its truths. In a city like this, events cannot be predicted as in Genoa or Milan. The relative and conditional are apt to turn into the absolute and irrevocable without notice.

“I’m going to leave you here,” Margraves said. “I’ve got some unfinished business to attend to.”
“Right,” Branch said, since it was all he could say. He knew that Margraves’ unfinished business concerned a bottle.

I’ve heard that some of the larger spiders hunt songbirds. I have no objection to that. The spiders belong here, too. Let nature do what it needs to do. We who are people know more than to guide ourselves by nature’s practices.