City of Glass I

"The detective is one who looks, who listens, who moves through the morass of objects and events in search of the thought, the idea that will pull all these things together and make sense of them. In effect, the writer and the detective are interchangeable. The reader sees the world through the detective's eyes, experiencing the proliferation of its details as if for the first time. He has become awake to the things around him, as if they might speak him, as if, because of the attentiveness he now brings them, they might begin to carry a meaning other than the simple fact of their existence"

Paul Auster en City of Glass