"I am not a brave man at all, but a cautious, even timid soul who makes himself pull off one stunt after another for his own good. And I entered the lonely darkness thinking: Public space should not be like this; all the world ought to be mine. But how can I make it so?" (61)

"Every time I surrender, even necessarily, to authority which disregardingly or contemptuously violates me, so I violate myself. Every time I break an unnecessary law, doing so for my own joy and to the detriment of no other human being, so I regain myself, and become strong in the parts of me that the security man can never see." (97-8)

-- From William T. Vollmann's train-hopping memoir, Riding to Everywhere.