Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combinatoria of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined? - Italo Calvino

With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpected dream is a rebus that conceals a desire or, its reverse, a fear. Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.

The city is redundant: it repeats itself so that something will stick in the mind.

[…]

Memory is redundant: it repeats signs so that the city can begin to exist.

"This was mere unfounded prejudice — that seems obvious to me — because neither before nor after existed, nor any place to immigrate from, but there were those who insisted that the concept of "immigrant" could be understood in the abstract, outside of space and time."