...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.
