“I always liked leaning out of the balcony late at night to watch the barkeepers close up shop. It always seemed such a relaxed, satisfied process. Couples would walk slowly by, smoking and talking softly. Others would linger in doorways, shutters half closed, and pass a few more moments in idle chat before sealing the doors and drifting home. It is, to me, unmistakably Paris.”
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"As this wave from memories flows in, the city soaks it up like a sponge and expands. A description of [the city] as it is today should contain all [the city's] past. The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the bags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls."
- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Grand Prix winner and Coup de Coeur winner, Académie Charles Cros


