“For Stephen, London was less a city that never slept, more a city that got a good nine hours.”

“The Parisian is of all men the most sophisticated. Paris is a city of realists, unaffected by sentimentality; a city of industry and thrift; a city of irony, but rarely of laughter, of wit but never or humour, of superficial intolerance and yet of people who regard the rest of the world with more or less amiable contempt.”

“Although it was almost midnight, London wasn't dark. Cities like London never were, she suspected, not anymore. The modern world had killed nighttime.”

“If London was an alien city, Edinburgh was another planet”

“If Rome, a city of the vulgar living, had been depressing after Greece, London, a city of the drab dead, was fifty times worse. ”

“Planning is for the world's great cities, for Paris, London, and Rome, for cities dedicated, at some level, to culture. Detroit, on the other hand, was an American city and therefore dedicated to money, and so design had given way to expediency.”