“You can’t deeply, fully know a town,” he said, “if you love it. Loving it, you’re charmed by surfaces. To deeply, fully know a town, you’ve got to hate it, loathe it, loathe it with an unquenchable fiery passion. You’ve got to be consumed by a need to learn all its rotten shameful secrets and use them against it, find its hidden cancers and feed them until they metastasize into apocalyptic tumors. You’ve got to live for the day when its every stone and stick will be wiped forever from the face of the earth.”
