# Quote — China Miéville, Perdido Street Station

> Sweet smoke wafted over the crowd: khepri, mostly, but here and there other races, investigating the statues. They filled the square: fifteen-foot figures of animals and plants and monstrous creatures, some real and some that had never lived, fashioned in brightly coloured khepri-spit. They represented hours and hours of communal labour. [...] To Lin the statues represented dedication and community, and bankrupt imaginations falling back on cod-heroic grandiosity. This was why she lived and ate and spat her art alone.

- 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: 20
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/China_Mi%C3%A9ville#Chapter_2) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/china-mieville/perdido-street-station/sweet-smoke-wafted

## 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)