The Sixth Borough Quotes

“When you’re in The System, like after being arrested, you’re no longer a participant. You’re being processed. Instead of an easy to ignore, well-greased cog, you become a sharp edge that needs to be ground down.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sixth Borough

“Do you want to live, Sander?”
― Alan Bradley, The Sixth Borough

“Magic is hard on our world. Pulling it in is really violent and damaging. The more we use it, the more we stretch out the membrane between this world and the one we draw it in from. And the other side…' She looked at Maldonado and he nodded. 'Well, it’s toxic.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sixth Borough

“We raced around, drinking and shouting out the windows into the night, finding parties to sneak into or bars that never closed. We wandered the night without fear, went skinny dipping in Central Park Lake at 3 a.m., and found dark clubs playing deafening EDM to dance to until we collapsed.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sixth Borough

“Think about it this way—if we die together, you won’t have to mourn me.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sixth Borough

“It started to feel like this thing happening to me was an invisible wall between us, a barrier none of us wanted to acknowledge but that was continuously pushing us apart. I started to feel like an outsider even among my closest friends.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sixth Borough

“Life was about making sense out of the insensible. A ball of fire out of a clear blue sky? Must’ve been a meteorite, maybe debris from an airplane. Random flashes of light and color at night? A transformer blew up, you must’ve been dreaming, you’re talking crazy, quiet down, take your meds.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sixth Borough

“What seemed at first like an act of incandescent self-destruction turned out to be the onramp to a bleak treadmill, one that felt designed to eradicate my personality and identity. It didn’t end my self-recrimination and misery. Instead, it illustrated just how good I’d had it living on the street.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sixth Borough

“Even with all this power, it comes down to the same old things. Connections, money, influence.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sixth Borough

“Look around! Look what we’ve done to the world. We fucked everything up. In a few years it’s going to be unlivable. We don’t deserve to be stewards of this planet. And that pales to the things we do to each other. We’re monsters, Sander, and someone needs to end it.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sixth Borough

“From the vaulted arches several stories above us, entire, mature trees were growing, reaching leafy boughs down into the open air between the floor and ceiling. There was a full glade growing up there, oak, birch, maple, and elm, like someone had carved out a few acres of the park and fixed it there upside down.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sixth Borough

“The holiday village had sprung up in Bryant Park, and the ice rink and booths were bustling with early Christmas shoppers. It smelled like fried food and scented candles, mixed with the occasional blast of diesel from the traffic inching along 42nd Street. When I think of how New York City smells, this is it.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sixth Borough