High-Rise (novel)

"The internal time of the high-rise, like an artificial psychological climate, operated to its own rhythms, generated by a combination of alcohol and insomnia ... All the residents he had met, upon learning he was a physician, at some point brought up their difficulties in sleeping. At parties people discussed their insomnia in the same way they referred to the other built-in design flaws of the building. In the early hours of the morning the two thousand tenants subsided below a silent tide of Seconal."

"Within half an hour almost all of the women were drunk, a yardstick Laing had long used to measure the success of a party."

"Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months."

"You think that were secretly enjoying all this?Dont you? Id guess so, doctor. Togetherness is beating up an empty elevator. For the first time since we were three years old what we do makes absolutely no difference."

"At times he felt that [his fellow tenants] were all waiting for someone to make a serious mistake."

"The high-rises seemed almost to challenge the sun itself."

"... their territorial instinct, in its psychological and social senses, had weakened to the point where it was ripe for exploitation."

"He felt excited in a confused way."

"... [I]n Annes world it was not only necessary for work to be done, but be seen to be done."

"Living in high-rises required a special type of behavior, one that was acquiescent, restrained, even perhaps slightly mad. A psychotic would have a ball here, he reflected. Vandalism had plagued these slab and tower blocks since their inception. Every torn-out piece of telephone equipment, every handle wrenched off a fire-safety door, every kicked-in electricity meter represented a stand against decerebration."

"But even before they sat down together on her bed Laing knew that, almost as an illustration of the paradoxical logic of the high-rise, their relationship would end rather than begin with this first sexual act."

"Somehow the high-rise played into the hands of the most petty impulses."