“The city was dark except for the building lights that seemed to appear like sores - like bandaids had been ripped off to expose the city's skin.”

“That's the city I see in my dreams, Poppy. It isn't like Ember at all. The sky is light and the buildings are tall and sort of sparkle." (Lina)”

“Bellis gasped.Everywhere lights where suspended. Globes of cold illumination like frost moons, with no trace of the sepia of the New Crobuzon's gaslamps. The city glowed in the darkening water like a net full of ghostly lights.The outer edges of the city were low buildings in porous stone and coral.”

“The city buildings in the distance are holding up the sky, it seems.”

“Each neighborhood of the city appeared to be made of a different substance, each seemed to have a different air pressure, a different psychic weight: the bright lights and shuttered shops, the housing projects and luxury hotels, the fire escapes and city parks.”

“It was as if the city itself was preparing for some impending catastrophe. There had always been talks of ghost and darkness here, even in his boyhood, and now that darkness seems to be seeping from the stones and timbers as much as it was descending from heavens.”