“You can lose yourself or disappear in a big city. You can even change your identity and live a new life. You can indulge in a very long investigation to find a trace of malice, starting only with one or two addresses in an isolated neighbourhood. I have always been fascinated by the short note that sometimes appears on search records: Last known address. Themes of disappearance, identity and the passing of time are closely bound up with the topography of cities. That is why since the 19th century, cities have been the territory of novelists, and some of the greatest of them are linked to a single city: Balzac and Paris, Dickens and London, Dostoyevsky and Saint Petersburg, Tokyo and Nagai Kafū, Stockholm and Hjalmar Söderberg.”
From Nobel Lecture (2014)
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Patrick Modiano 42
French writer 1945Related quotes

version in original Dutch (citaat van Gerrit Benner, in het Nederlands:) In de stad kun je jezelf verliezen, en dat is goed. In een kleine stad gaat dat niet. In Leeuwarden [waar Benner woonde tot c. 1954] kwam je jezelf toch altijd weer tegen, maar in Amsterdam is er zoveel, daar is dat niet mogelijk. Een prachtige stad, daar leef ik op.
Quote of Benner (1977), in the article 'Buitenbeetje Benner verliet ons'; Dutch newspaper 'Leeuwarder Courant', 26 August 1977
1950 - 1980

Greenwich Village as It Is, in Pearson’s Magazine (October 1916)

“You can always change your plan, but only if you have one..”
The Last Lecture (2008)
Variant: You can always change your plan, but only if you have one.."