" She quickly learned that the sight of Venice at given moments can root you in your deepest longings. It can also make you realise your identity too is built on shifting water, consists of rising and falling tides, countless ephemeral reflections and refractions. Venice can wash through you the love you have never made, the battles you have never fought, the beauty you have never created. It can flood to the surface everything you have lost and everything you have never known. It can reveal you to yourself without your carnival masks. "

― Glenn Haybittle , The War in Venice