London always reminds me of a brain. It is similarly convoluted and circuitous. A lot of cities, especially American ones like New York and Chicago, are laid out in straight lines. Like the circuits on computer chips, there are a lot of right angles in cities like this. But London is a glorious mess. It evolved from a score or so of distinct villages, that merged and meshed as their boundaries enlarged. As a result, London is a labyrinth, full of turnings and twistings just like a brain.

James Geary (b.1962), On London, All Aphorisms, All the Time

London is a huge shop, with a hotel on the upper storeys.

George Gissing (1857-1903) New Grub Street

Private courts, / Gloomy as coffins, and unsightly lanes / Thrilled by some female vendor’s scream, belike / The very shrillest of all London cries, / May then entangle our impatient steps; / Conducted through those labyrinths, unawares, / To privileged regions and inviolate, / Where from their airy lodges studious lawyers / Look out on waters, walks, and gardens green.

William Wordsworth (1779-1850), The Prelude

London is the clearing-house of the world.

Joseph Chamberlain (1836-1914), speech at Guildhall, 19th January, 1904

[London is] like the sight of a heavy sea from a rowing boat in the middle of the Atlantic . . . One lives in it, afloat but half submerged in a heavy flood of brick, stone, asphalt, slate, steel, glass, concrete, and tarmac, seeing nothing fixable beyond a few score white spires that splash up like spits of foam above the next glum wave of dirty buildings.

V. S. Pritchett (1900-1997), London Perceived