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People hurried past, the others of the street, endless anonymous, twenty-one lives per second, race-walking in their faces and pigments, sprays of fleetest being.
Don Delillo
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Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote reflects on the rapid pace of urban life and the anonymity of individuals within it.

Don DeLillo's quote captures the essence of modern existence, where individuals are often lost in the hustle and bustle of city life. It evokes a sense of both the vibrancy and the detachment that comes with living in a densely populated environment, highlighting how people can coexist yet remain invisible to one another as they rush through their daily routines.

Themes

Urban LifeAnonymityHustleExistenceIndividuality

In practice

Example use cases

In a discussion about the fast pace of modern cities, one might use this quote to illustrate how people often overlook the lives of those around them.

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[I]n the American soul there is a lonely individual standing in a vast landscape. 
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