China Miéville

"Joanna took Mel to Dresden, to the Frauenkirche. The timed their visit to coincide with a monthly English evensong. “Firebombs not enough?” Mel whispered. “Now we inflict Anglicanism on them?"

"This was the remnant of honour, nostalgic for spurious legendary times."

"Annalise’s fantasies involve disappearance. She catastrophizes all the time, and makes things worse than they need to be by doing so."

"Neither dust nor light stirred. It was as if time had been bled dry and given up."

"Socialism and SF are the two most fundamental influences in my life."

"Lin realized that she was living in an unsustainable realm. It combined sanctimony, decadence, insecurity and snobbery in a weird, neurotic brew. It was parasitic."

"There’s simultaneously something rigorous and something playful in genre. It’s about the positing of something impossible—whether not-yet-possible or never-possible—and then taking that impossibility …"

"Art’s something you choose to make … it’s a bringing together of … of everything around you into something that makes you more human, more khepri, whatever. More of a person."