I saw a cafe...The smallness of it, the intimacy of it, the humanity of its proportion, the absence of arrogance, the absence of gloss and glitter touched me and once again opened me to tenderness as Paris has always done...One could sit there and feel unique, in tune with the world, or out of tune, feel human, open to human emotions and wanting to weep. One could sit there if one felt the world too big, too barbaric, and once more experience a human setting, a proper setting for a human being who does not feel arrogant, glossy, powerful. The small cafe and tenderness were not gone, the patina of much living, the worn, the tired, the wistful, my cafe, my Paris, where a soul can be a little worn, where it does not have to be shop-new, shop-glossy, hard and brittle.
- Anais Nin (Paris Revisited)