‘… he felt an urgent need to escape somewhere from the skyscrapers, the traffic blocks, the sirens of police cars and ambulances, the heroic statues of liberators on horseback …’

Graham Greene, The Honorary Consul

‘Mientras escribo estoy ausente

y cuando vuelvo ya he partido:

voy a ver si a las otras gentes

les pasa lo que a mí me pasa,

si son tantas como soy yo

si se parecen a sí mismos

y cuando lo haya averiguado

voy a aprender tan bien las cosas

que para explicar mis problemas

le hablaré de geografía.’

Pablo Neruda

(‘While I write I am absent and when I return I have already left; I am going to find out if other people experience the same thing as I do, if they are as many as I am, if they look like each other, and when I have found all this out, I’m going to learn things so well that in order to explain my problems, I’ll talk of geography.’)