" It was all the same, wasn’t it? The same women moving across the terraces in a familiar click of heels, the same men murmuring to one another in low tones about the same things they always discussed, their eyebrows drawn together in the same clichéd expression of concern. It all struck Avery as futile, and purposeless. Here they were, halfway around the world, and yet everyone was stuck in their little loops—engaging in the old tired flirtations, doomed to the same disappointments. "

― Katharine McGee , The Dazzling Heights (The Thousandth Floor, #2)