"Soft and moist, a hanging heat. ...

...People still came, talking, looking out to sea. They stood around the horn player, the man with the hand drums. There were sellers of invisible commodities, names whispered in the dark. Children kept appearing from the edges, silently crossing some margin or dividing line, cradling the shriveled infants. People drifted toward the Gateway from the street along the sea wall, from the inner streets, the edges, to stand in the warm night together and wait for a breeze. The sound of bicycle bells struck briefly to the air."

                                            Don DeLillo, The Names, page 256.

"In the light of a lowering sky...

...the city is immediate and sculptured. None of summer's white palls, its failures of distance and perspective. There are shadow-angles, highlighted surfaces, areas of grayish arcs and washes. laundry blows on rooftops and balconies. Against an urgent sky, with dull thunder pounding over the gulf, this washwork streaming in the wind can be an emblematic and touching thing. Always the laundry, always the lone old woman in black who keeps to a corner of the elevator, the bent woman in endless mourning. She disturbs the composure of the modern building with its intercom and carpeted lobby, its marble veneer."

                                    Don DeLillo, The Names, page 175.