It wasn’t a city, it was a process, a weight on
the world that distorted the land for hundreds of miles around. People who’d never see it in their whole lives
nevertheless spent their life working for it.
Thousands and thousands of green acres were part of it, forests were
part of it. It drew in and consumed…
…and gave back the dung from its pens and
the soot from its chimneys, and steel, and saucepans, and all the tools by
which its food was made. And also its
clothes, and fashions and ideas and interesting vices, songs and knowledge and
something which if looked at in the right light, was called civilization. That’s what civilization meant. It meant the city.
‘Night Watch’ – Terry Pratchett
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