On Multiplicity

If you imagine an ordinary moment at an intersection in New York City, a street light -- some people are stopped and others are in motion, some cars are stopped and others are in motion -- if you were to put that in film terms, in a freeze frame, and hold everything for a second, you would realize that there's a universe there of totally disparate intentions. Everybody going about his or her business in the silence of their own minds with everybody else, and the street, and the time of day, and the architecture, and the quality of light, and the nature of the weather as a kind of background or field for the individual consciousness. When you think about that, that's what happens in the city, in that somehow the city can embrace and accept and accommodate all that disparate intention at one and the same time. Not only in that corner, but in thousands of corners. It's really an astonishing thing.

E. L. Doctorow