“And if the Thames that ran behind them, sure and silver in the afternoon light, recalled a night long ago when the moon shone as brightly as a shilling on this same boy and girl, or if the stones of Blackfriars knew the tread of their feet and thought to themselves: At last, the wheel comes to a full circle, they kept their silence.” – Cassandra Clare

“London is a world of glamour, excitement, activity, amusement and all the attractions of worldly wit and casual relationships; but we also infer that it is a world of endlessly false appearances, a world in which manners substitute for morals, a world given over to cold deception, manipulation and exploitation,” –Tony Tanner

“One might fancy that day, the London day, was just beginning. Like a women who had slipped off her print dress and white apron to array herself in blue pearls, the day, changed, put off stuff, took gauze, change to evening, and with the same sigh of exhilaration that a woman breathes, tumbling petticoats on the floor, it too shed dust, heat, color; the traffic thinned; motor cars, tinkling, darting, succeeded the lumber of vans; and here and there among the thick foliage of the squares, an intense light hung. I resign, the evening seemed to say, as it paled and faded above the battlements and prominences, molded, pointed, of the hotel, flat, and block of shops, I fade, she was beginning. I disappear, but London would have none of it and rushed her bayonets into the sky, pinioned her, constrained her to partnership in her revelry.” – Virginia Woolf

“[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

“Once on a dark winter’s day, when the yellow fog hung so thick and heavy in the streets of London that the lamps were lighted and the shop windows blazed with gas as they do at night, an odd-looking little girl sat in a cab with her father and was driven rather slowly through the big thoroughfares.” – Frances Hodgson Burnett

“The appearance presented by the streets of London an hour before sunrise, on a summer’s morning, is mist 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

“Live your life in any way, London says. It encourages defiance. I loved what it gave me, who allowed me to be. On the nights I could afford a minicab home, I rolled down the window while crossing the river and watched the lights on the water, knowing most late-night mini-cabers were reaffirming their love of London with the same view. I loved its messiness, its attempts at order. I loved the anonymity it afforded.” – Craig Taylor

“The City seems so much more in earnest: its business, its rush, its roar are such serious things, sights, and sounds. The City is getting its living – the Wes-End but enjoying its pleasure.” – Charlotte Brontë

“In many ways, London is like a great big pinata, and everyone who lives here is like an excited, blindfolded child with a heart full of hope and a big flailing stick Aim that stick right and London will split. At the seams like a ruptured spleen, showering you with the most extraordinary places to visit, places like you won’t find anywhere else in the world Get it wrong and the chances are you’ll lose your footing and end up in a frustrated, eyeless heap.” – Paul Carr

“Sir, if you wish to have a just nothing of the magnitude of this city, you must not be satisfied with seeing its great streets and squares, but must survey the innumerable little lanes and courts. It is not in the showy evolutions of buildings, but in the multiplicity of human habitations which are crowded together, that the wonderful immensity of London consists.” – Samuel Johnson

“London is a world in itself. It contains within itself all that is gorgeous in wealth, and all that is squalid in poverty; all that is illustrious in knowledge, and all that is debased in ignorance; all that is beautiful in virtue, and all that is revolting in crime. Adequately to chronicle and to describe such as city is a task beyond any individual powers.” – Charles Knight