So, for a book set in 2006, Open City evades certain markers, while it embraces certain others. Julius doesn't use a smartphone, and he doesn't discuss contemporary US politics in any fine detail.

I deeply respect American sentimentality, the way one respects a wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it, for you know it is deadly.

Writing as writing. Writing as rioting. Writing as righting. On the best days, all three.

The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.

The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.

To be alive, it seemed to me, as I stood there in all kinds of sorrow, was to be both original and reflection, and to be dead was to be split off, to be reflection alone.

Things don't go away just because you choose to forget them.

The energies of Lagos life- creative, malevolent, ambiguous- converge at the bus stops

I just realized that we're facing here is an empathy gap. And this was just another way to generate conversation about something that nobody wanted to look at.

Love perhaps includes the promise that when the mob comes for you I'll go against the mob.

The site was a palimpsest, as was all the city, written, erased, rewritten.

I didn't wait to see her ship go off, because partings are stupid things and best got over quickly

When a blind man carries the lame man both go forward.

One American said that the most interesting thing about Holy Ireland was that its people hate each other in the name of Jesus Christ. And they do!

Let us begin by doing our best to do our best, every single time, no matter what, forever.

Playing lifts you out of yourself into a delirious place.

Do we eagerly long for the coming of Christ? Or do we want him to wait while our love affair with the world runs its course? That is the question that tests the authenticity of faith.

There is a narrative to every life, and I believe in the classic mode of storytelling that goes back to Homer and carries through to today.

Baseball is not like football, basketball where a momentum is something made. You don't really have that kind of momentum in baseball.

Nothing comes amiss, so money comes withal.