here is a quote that i wanted to use in my exams but didn't get to:

“Your gaze scans the streets as if they were written pages: the city says everything you must think, makes you repeat her discourse, and while you believe you are visiting Tamara you are only recording the names with which she defines herself and all her parts. However the city may really be, beneath this thick coating of signs, whatever it may contain or conceal, you leave Tamara without having discovered it. Outsie, the land stretches, empty, to the horizon; the sky opens, with speeding clouds, you are already intent on recognizing figures: a sailing ship, a hand, an elephant…”

--Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities