Moving across the city's great broken body

I had to admit to myself that I lived for nights like these, moving across the city’s great broken body, making connections among its millions of cells. I had a crazy wish or fantasy that some day before I died, if I made all the right neural connections, the citty would come all the way alive. Like the Bride of Frankenstein.

— Ross MacDonald, 1968

From the book The Instant Enemy