“I’ve no interest in this city. I do not want to live in a curio, Johannes. This is a sideshow! This is something to scare the children! ‘The Floating Pirate City’! I don’t want it! I don’t want to live in this great bobbing parasite, like some fucking pondskater sucking its victims dry. This isn’t a city, Johannes; it’s a parochial little village less than a mile wide, and I do not want it. “I was always going to return to New Crobuzon. I would never wish to see out my days outside it. It’s dirty and cruel and difficult and dangerous—particularly for me, particularly now—but it’s my home.
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