City People

On the way from the railroad station he had walked tall in the mass of moving metal and concrete speckled with the very small eyes of people. His head jerked backwards after each passing figure until they began to pass too thickly and he observed that their eyes didn't grab at you like the eyes of country people. Several of them bumped into him and this contact that should have made an acquaintance for life made nothing because the hulks shoved on with ducked heads and muttered apologies that he would have accepted if they had waited. You have to do something particular here to make them look at you, he thought. They ain't going to look at you just because God made you.

—Flannery O'Connor, You Can’t Be Any Poorer Than Dead and The Violent Bear It Away.