The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand - Italo Calvino

"Every silence consists of the network of minuscule sounds that enfolds it."

- from "The Adventure of a Poet"

"Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased," Polo said. "Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it, or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little."

The things that the novel does not say are necessarily more numerous than those it does say and only a special halo around what is written can give the illusion that you are reading also what is not written.