# Quote — China Miéville, Perdido Street Station

> You can’t respect other people’s individuality if you focus on your own individuality in a kind of abstract, isolated way. The point is that you are an individual inasmuch as you exist in a social matrix of others who respect your individuality and your right to make choices. That’s concrete individuality: an individuality that recognizes that it owes its existence to a kind of communal respect on the part of all the other individualities, and that it had better therefore respect them similarly.

- 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: 71
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/China_Mi%C3%A9ville#Chapter_6) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/china-mieville/perdido-street-station/you-cant-respect

## 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)