...of anonymity

Among the endless streets, with their horizons that are constantly opening out, then closing in again, like series of sliding doors, he who is walking without going anywhere advances into the devouring jungle. He leaves scraps of his skin, fragments of his flesh on the thorns and the hooks. There is no emptiness more empty than this abundance, there is no cruelty more cruel than this security, everywhere.
Sheets of metal, iron-panelled doors, sidewalks, walls, safes, tin roofs, hardness everywhere, impenetrable surfaces.
The hand cannot pass through, the hand of thought.
The havens are false, they lie.
The skin is hypocritical, only cold steel can pierce it.
The face with familiar features,

                                             hair
                                         forehead
                                   eye                eye
                                             nose
                                            mouth
                                              chin

is a mask of plaster and tinplate, it never says anything. There is nothing more dead than this living person. There is nothing that radiates greater silence.

[The Book of Flights, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]