There’s a hole in the world / Like a great black pit / And the vermin of the world / Inhabit it . . . / And it goes by the name of London.

Stephen Sondheim (b.1930), Sweeney Todd

This melancholy London – I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air.

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), letter to Katharine Tynan, 25th August, 1888

London is an endless skirmish between angles and emptiness.

China Tom Miéville (b.1972), Kraken

The appearance presented by the streets of London an hour before sunrise, on a summer’s morning, is most striking even to the few whose unfortunate pursuits of pleasure, or scarcely less unfortunate pursuits of business, cause them to be well acquainted with the scene. There is an air of cold, solitary desolation about the noiseless streets which we are accustomed to see thronged at other times by a busy, eager crowd, and over the quiet, closely-shut buildings, which throughout the day are swarming with life and bustle, that is very impressive.

Charles Dickens (1812-1870), Sketches by Boz

In this city 300 languages are spoken and the people that speak them live side by side in harmony. This city typifies what I believe is the future of the human race and a future where we grow together and we share and we learn from each other.

Ken Livingston (b.1945), press conference, 8th July, 2005