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Romanens åpningsavsnitt:

Milly, she felt, would be a good name. Quiet, undistinguished, and as different from her real name as it was possible to be.
Real? Who needed to be real, travelling on the Inner Circle at four o’clock on a Monday afternoon? Staring past the blank, middle-aged faces opposite, she caught sight of her own blank, middle-aged face reflected in the scurrying blackness of the window beyond. She almost laughed at the likeness between the whole lot of them, and at the feeling of safety it gave her. It’s because of London Passenger Transport, she mused, dreamy and almost light-headed by now from lack of food and sleep: we’re just the Passenger part of London Passenger Transport. How marvellous to be just a swaying statistic, gently nodding, staring into space! Statistical space. Nobody, she reflected, ever brings their real selves with them on to a tube train. None of us have. We have all left our identities behind in some vast spiritual Left Luggage office: and no one could guess—no one, possibly, could ever guess, just by looking—that there is one among all these glazed faces that has left its identity behind not just for the duration of the tube journey, but for ever.