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Book: The City & the City
Quotes of Book: The City & the City

China Miéville _ The City & the City
There are parts where even individual trees are crosshatched, where Ul Qoman children and Besz children clamber past each other, each obeying their parents' whispered strictures to unsee the other.
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China Miéville _ The City & the City
It's not just us keeping them apart. It's everyone in Beszel and everyone in Ul Qoma. Every minute, every day. We're only the last ditch: it's everyone in the cities who does most of the work. It works because you don't blink. That's why unseeing and unsensing are so vital. No one can admit it doesn't work. So if you don't admit it, it does. But if you breach, even if it's not your fault, for more than the shortest time ... you can't come back from that.
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China Miéville _ The City & the City
Volunteering's an early and strong indication that you're not suited," he said.
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China Miéville _ The City & the City
How could one not think of the stories we all grew up on, that surely the Ul Qomans grew up on too? Ul Qoman man and Besź maid, meeting in the middle of Copula Hall, returning to their homes to realise that they live, grosstopically, next door to each other, spending their lives faithful and alone, rising at the same time, walking crosshatched streets close like a couple, each in their own city, never breaching, never quite touching, never speaking a word across the border.
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China Miéville _ The City & the City
Same weather over here as back home," I said.
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China Miéville _ The City & the City
They looked like people-shaped clay in the moments before God breathed out.
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China Miéville _ The City & the City
The early years of a Bes {and presumably an Ul Qoman} child are intense learnings of cues. We pick up styles of clothing, permissible colours, ways of walking and holding oneself, very fast. Before we were eight or so most of us could be trusted not to breach embarrassingly and illegally, though licence of course is granted children every moment they are in the street.
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China Miéville _ The City & the City
...If she were studying Orciny, and there might be excellent reasons to do so, she'd be doing her doctorate in Folklore or Anthropology or maybe Comp Lit. Granted, the edges of disciplines are getting vague. Also that Mahalia is one of a number of young archaeologists more interested in Foucault and Baudrillard than in Gordon Childe or in trowels.
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China Miéville _ The City & the City
Tutte le note erano come a strati, un palinsesto di interpretazione in progresso. Feci archeologia.
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China Miéville _ The City & the City
«Si riferisce ai loro poteri magici? Vorrei, lo vorrei tanto. Ma anche così questi scavi sono incomparabili. La cultura materiale non ha nessun senso. Non esiste nessun'altra parte al mondo in cui si possa riportare alla luce quelli che sembrano oggetti della tarda antichità con bordi taglienti, reperti in bronzo bellissimi e compositi mischiati con materiale palesemente neolitico. Con questa roba è come se la stratigrafia andasse a farsi benedire. È stata usata come prova contro il matrix di Harris... erroneamente, ma capirà perché. Ecco perché questi scavi sono così popolari fra i giovani archeologi.
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