# Quote — China Miéville, Perdido Street Station

> Sometimes I clamber to the top of the huge, huge towers that teeter like porcupine spines from the city’s hide. Up in the thinner air, the winds lose the melancholy curiosity they have at street level. They abandon their second-floor petulance. Stirred by towers that poke above the host of city light-intense white carbide lamps, smoke-burnished red of lit grease, tallow twinkling, frenetic sputtering gas flare, all anarchic guards against the dark-the winds rejoice and play. I can dig my claws into the rim of a building’s crown and spread my arms and feel the buffets and gouts of boisterous air and I can close my eyes and remember, for a moment, what it is to fly.

- Author: [China Miéville](https://www.leafyquotes.com/china-mieville.md)
- Book: [Perdido Street Station](https://www.leafyquotes.com/china-mieville/perdido-street-station.md)
- Page: 59
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/China_Mi%C3%A9ville#Chapter_5) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/china-mieville/perdido-street-station/sometimes-i-clamber

## More from this book

> We say: votes for all and vote for change!

p. 127 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/china-mieville/perdido-street-station/we-say-votes.md)

> This is what makes the world, Ms. Lin. I believe this to be the fundamental dynamic. Transition. The point where one thing becomes another. It is what makes you, the city, the world, what they are. And that is the theme I’m interested in. The zone where the disparate become part of the whole. The hybrid zone.

p. 41 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/china-mieville/perdido-street-station/this-is-what.md)

> We have watched mutant creatures crawl from sewers into cold flat starlight and whisper shyly to each other, drawing maps and messages in faecal mud.
>
> I have sat with the wind at my side and seen cruel things, wicked things.
>
> My scars and bonestubs itch. I am forgetting the weight, the sweep, the motion of wings. If I were not garuda I would pray. But I will not obeise myself before arrogant spirits.

p. 58 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/china-mieville/perdido-street-station/we-have-watched.md)