“As I luxuriate in the discovery that I am no special sponge for sorrow, but merely another fallible animal in this stone maze of a city, I come simultaneously to see that I am the focus of some vast device fueled by an obscure desire.”

Source: My Autobiography (p. 271 Simon and Schuster 1964 edition)

News.com.au http://www.news.com.au/mayor-surprised-adelaide-has-tv/story-0-1225699598081

The Thirteen Clocks (1951) page 32
From other fiction

Crabbed Age and Youth.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XIV
Context: What am I? I am the desire not to die. I have always been impelled — not that evening alone — by the need to construct the solid, powerful dream that I shall never leave again. We are all, always, the desire not to die. This desire is as immeasurable and varied as life's complexity, but at bottom this is what it is: To continue to be, to be more and more, to develop and to endure. All the force we have, all our energy and clearness of mind serve to intensify themselves in one way or another. We intensify ourselves with new impressions, new sensations, new ideas. We endeavour to take what we do not have and to add it to ourselves. Humanity is the desire for novelty founded upon the fear of death. That is what it is.

After his daughter gave birth to his grandson, October 7, 2002
Pet Phrases, 2002

Source: A Clockwork Orange

Cited in: SanSan Kwan, Kinesthetic City: Dance and Movement in Chinese Urban Spaces, 2013 p. xxx; Talking about Shanghai
Text originate from a French-made documentary, where "Jin herself associated her (definitely female) identity with the city" of Shanghai.