"In effect, the apartment block was a small vertical city, its two thousand inhabitants boxed up into the sky.j.g."

"the ragged skyline of the city resembled the disturbed encephalograph of an unresolved mental crisis."

"this was an environment built, not for man, but for man's absence."

"Without knowing it, he had constructed a gigantic vertical zoo, its hundreds of cages stacked above each other. All the events of the past few months made sense if one realised that these brilliant and exotic creatures had learned to open the doors."