High-Rise Quotes
"Living in high-rises required a special type of behavior, one that was acquiescent, restrained, even perhaps slightly mad."
"The absence of humour, for example, had always struck Wilder as the single most significant feature - all research by investigators confirmed that the tenants of high-rises made no jokes about them."
"Everything had started to get out of hand. Disturbed by the continuous noise, he had slept for little more than an hour."
"By its very efficiency, the high-rise took over the task of maintaining the social structure that supported them all."
"The high-rise was a huge machine designed to serve, not the collective body of tenants, but the individual resident in isolation."
"For the first time it removed the need to repress every kind of anti-social behavior, and left them free to explore any deviant or wayward impulses."
"In many ways, the high-rise was a model of all that technology had done to make possible the expression of a truly 'free' psychopathology."
"The more arid and effectless life became in the high-rise, the greater the possibilities it offered."
"However, it was difficult to organize any kind of counter-attack."
"The television documentary would dramatize all their resentments."
"The shape of his documentary was already being determined."
"Wilder ignored the rebuff and stood under the next spray."
"His body was unusually well muscled, Wilder noticed."
"I’ve begun planning the television documentary."
"Wilder watched Laing and his party of friends playing about in the deep end."
"Their real opponent was the image of the building in their own minds."
"Wilder realized that he no longer felt committed to this crowd of impulsive tenants."
"The tampering with the electricity system had affected the air-conditioning."
"Like a huge and aggressive malefactor, the high-rise was determined to inflict every conceivable hostility upon them."
"Royal realized that he had discovered a second building inside the one that he had originally occupied."
"The residents’ rebellion against the apartment building was now in full swing."
"Royal felt a modest pride in this act, which rekindled a primitive territorial reflex."
"The music from the balconies nearby was overlaid by the noise of sporadic acts of violence."
"These sporadic raids on apartments were taking place with increasing frequency."
"Laing felt the alcohol bolt through his head."
"Some unconscious system of communication alerted any would-be raiders."
"A continuous decline had been taking place for some time, a steady erosion of standards."
"Far more important was the physical security of the apartment, particularly while he was away."
"Recently Laing had noticed a strong but not unpleasant smell, the characteristic odour of the apartment–himself."
"The gaunt, white-skinned figure with a bruised forehead standing awkwardly in an over-large business suit looked totally unconvincing."
"Almost everything possible had been vandalized–lobby mirrors fractured, pay-phones torn out, sofa upholstery slashed."
"Residents moved around the building in small groups, sharply on the look-out for any strangers."
"Laing was no longer surprised by the way in which the residents... were now just as united in assuring any outsiders that all was well."
"Looking up at the endless tiers of balconies, he felt uneasily like a visitor to a malevolent zoo."
"For all its present conflict, the high-rise represented safety and security."
"Our neighbours had happy childhoods to a man and still feel angry."
"The floors were littered with the blackened negative strips, flakes falling from this internal sun."
"The darkness was reassuring, providing its own security, the natural medium of their life in the apartment building."
"The confrontation subsided, moving away like a storm towards the lower floors."
"Wilder hesitated, controlling his impulse to turn and run down the staircase to his apartment."
"The intoxication of living at this height was as palpable as anything produced by the wine bottle in his hand."
"For all its inconveniences, Laing was satisfied with life in the high-rise."
"By now what violence there was had become totally stylized, spasms of cold and random aggression."
"Laing turned the cold water tap on and off, listening to the faintly changing tone."
"He picked at the dirt on the backs of his hands."
"For weeks all he had been able to think about were the next raid, the next apartment to be ransacked, the next tenant to be beaten up."
"Each one brought them a step closer to the ultimate goal of the high-rise, a realm where their most deviant impulses were free at last to exercise themselves in any way they wished."
"The walls were spattered with blood, overlaying the aerosolled graffiti like the tachist explosions in the paintings that filled the top-floor apartments."
"Laing’s feet crackled among the polaroid negatives scattered about the corridor floor, each recording a long-forgotten act of violence."
"The reappearance of television in his life convinced Laing that everything in the high-rise was becoming normal again."
"He thought of himself in this enormous building, free to roam its floors and concrete galleries, to climb its silent elevator shafts, to sit by himself in turn on every one of its thousand balconies."
"Her serious face, with its blue cyanosed hue, was inclined over the cat like that of a tolerant parent watching a child at play."
"Sitting on the steps, leaning against a dining-room table which formed part of a massive barricade blocking the staircase, Wilder was frozen."
"The markings, apart from frightening the few other people he might come across, gave him a potent sense of identity."
"Her mother and father pottered about in the lobby. Now and then the old woman in her evening gown pulled a piece of furniture at random from the barricade and chopped it into kindling with the carving knife."