"The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself."
- Bertrand Russell, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth ... See MoreSee Less

"The very houses seemed disposed to sleep, and it was a holiday for the streets, which were swept of their customary passengers, and left to their own quiet and shadows."
- Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge ... See MoreSee Less

"What are the convulsions of a city in comparison with the insurrections of the soul?"
- Victor Hugo, Les Misérables ... See MoreSee Less

"From this height the sleeping city seems like a child's construction, a model which has refused to be constrained by imagination."
- Ian Rankin, Dead Souls ... See MoreSee Less

"But if a city hasn't been used by an artist not even the inhabitants live there imaginatively."
- Alasdair Gray, Lanark ... See MoreSee Less

"The wet air was as cold as the ashes of love."
- Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely ... See MoreSee Less

"It's true, though: time moves in its own special way in the middle of the night."
- Haruki Murakami, After Dark ... See MoreSee Less

"The Bastille not only overshadowed the capital, but it darkened the hearts of men, for it had been notorious for centuries as the instrument and the emblem of tyranny."
- Lord Acton, Lectures on the French Revolution ... See MoreSee Less

"Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it. It was cold, oh, cold enough! But it was also still, wonderfully still and vast like the cold stillness of space in which the stars revolve."
- Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf ... See MoreSee Less

"And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth."
- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness ... See MoreSee Less

"The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together."
- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities ... See MoreSee Less

"It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled."
- Charles Dickens, Hard Times ... See MoreSee Less

"At last! I am alone! The only sounds to be heard are the rattling of a few belated and tired-out cabs. For a few hours at least we shall have silence, if not repose."
- Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen ... See MoreSee Less

"He walked on, through a gloomy succession of streets, where the tall, dark houses seemed to close in upon him."
- Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby ... See MoreSee Less

"The street lamp sputtered
The street lamp muttered in the dark."
- T.S. Eliot, Rhapsody on a Windy Night ... See MoreSee Less