Deep Quote by Peter Conrad

A city, Conrad insists, is not a place you ever fully possess; it is a machine for rationing experience. The phrasing is deliberately constricting: "all that... will ever allow you" turns the metropolis into a gatekeeper, doling out access on its own terms. That word "allow" carries the subtext of power. You don't simply wander into total understanding; you are granted a partial view by infrastructure, class, language, time, fatigue, and luck.

The line works because it rejects the tourist fantasy that the right itinerary can deliver "the real city". Conrad frames urban life as perspective, not essence. "An angle... oblique, indirect sample" reads like a manifesto against the authoritative city portrait: no panoramic mastery, only slants. Even the most plugged-in resident moves through selective corridors: commuting routes, neighborhood loyalties, social scenes, algorithmically curated recommendations. The city you know is the city your habits can reach.

"Contains, or what passes through it" is the quiet flex. Cities aren't just buildings and populations; they're flows: migrants, capital, rumors, fashions, deliveries, protests, viruses. Your angle captures some of that traffic and misses most of it. The emphasis on "passes through" also suggests impermanence, making urban identity less about rooted tradition and more about circulation.

Contextually, this lands in a long tradition of modern urban writing (from Baudelaire's flaneur to contemporary psychogeography) that treats the city as legible only in fragments. Conrad isn't being mystical; he's being honest about scale. The point isn't to despair at partial knowledge, but to admit that the city's truth is plural, and your "point of view" is the admission ticket.