Philadelphia Fire Quotes

“If the city is a man, a giant sprawled for miles on his back, rough contours of his body smothering the rolling landscape, the rivers and woods, hills and valleys, bumps and gullies, crushing with his weight, his shadow, all the life beneath him, a derelict in a terminal stupor, too exhausted, too wasted to move, rotting in the sun, then Cudjoe is deep within the giant's stomach, in a subway-surface car shuddering through stinking loops of gut, tunnels carved out of decaying flesh, a prisoner of rumbling innards that scream when trolleys pass over rails embedded in flesh.”
― John Edgar Wideman, Philadelphia Fire

“Wouldn't there be a long time when nobody'd know what was happening? Centuries out of kilter, askew, but no one understanding the problem. Just this queasiness, this uneasiness. This tilt and slow falling. You are in a city. You look up and can't see the stars and that doesn't bother you as much as it should. You don't know what's wrong but maybe more's wrong than you want to know.”
― John Edgar Wideman, Philadelphia Fire

“Trick about night is it changes things but you can't see exactly how. You know the park is different, you feel it in your bones. Night air cools the skin, contours of the ground rise and fall in unfamiliar rhythms, spaces open which haven't been there before, the hollow loses its bottom, a black lap you'd sink into forever.”
― John Edgar Wideman, Philadelphia Fire