100 Quotes About City

Cities were always like people, showing their varying personalities to the traveler. Depending on the city and on the traveler, there might begin a mutual love, or dislike, friendship, or enmity. Where one city will rise a certain individual to glory, it will destroy another who is not suited to its personality. Only through travel can we know where we belong or not, where we are loved and where we are rejected. . Roman Payne

There’s something about arriving in new cities, wandering empty streets with no destination. I will never lose the love for the arriving, but I'm born to leave. Charlotte Eriksson

Look, girls know when they’re cute, ” he said. “You don’t have to tell them. All they need to do is look in the mirror. I have one friend out in New York, an attorney. She moved out there after the school year to take the bar. She doesn’t have a job. I was like, ‘How are you going to get a job there in this market?’ And she’s like, ‘I’ll wink and I’ll smile.’ She’s a pretty girl. Whether that works despite her poor grades is yet to be seen. Daniel Amory

One of the professors told me last week that he feels bad teaching with the way the economy is now. ‘What’s the point?’ he said. ‘Kids aren’t getting jobs.’ You never hear faculty talk that way. He did. Daniel Amory

Do you want to achieve something or do you just want to make money?” asked a nearby man in a white shirt to another man in a striped shirt. I waited for the answer as I slowly walked past them. “Why is it an either or question?” the man in the striped shirt finally murmured philosophically under a sip of beer. They both stood there looking at each other in thought. Daniel Amory

Don’t you think most of those kids think too much about who got an A or a B when they were in law school and what that means to an inflated G.P.A. and not enough about the world?” asked Connor irrelevantly. Daniel Amory

Really, nobody was there?” I asked.“ Well, nobody important, ” he said, putting his glasses back on and blinking. Daniel Amory

Should I have a doughnut or my disgusting cardboard?” asked Gwynn, as she drew up languidly before me at a study table in a bookstore on State Street, raising a puffed rice cake in the air. My eyes narrowed attentively at her face, but as I hesitated, she announced eagerly, “Disgusting cardboard it is! Daniel Amory

You know, sometimes I think this is just not it, ” he said, his glasses flashing from the early night’s light. He turned toward me in a thoughtful pause.“ You know what I mean, Tom?” he asked. “It’s just not. Daniel Amory

I stood there and stared, into the sky and at the city around me. I stood, hands at my side, and I saw what had happened to me and who I was and the way things would always be for me. Truth. There was no more wishing, or wondering. I knew who I was, and what I would always do. I believed it, as my teeth touched and my eyes were overrun. Markus Zusak

I don’t think I’ve ever referred to any girl I dated as my girlfriend. I think that would freak me out. Even the girl that I dated for two years in college I don’t think I ever referred to her as my girlfriend.”“ How would you introduce her?” I asked.“ I’m just going to say her name, ” he said. Daniel Amory

I’ve officially turned into a loser, ” she whispered cynically. “I’m looking forward to going home and having cereal for dinner and walking Mitchell and studying a little and then going to sleep. I’ve had my ‘going out and having fun’ quota for the year, I guess, and it’s June. Daniel Amory

This is so funny, ” said Ellen, noticing the seating arrangement. “Isn’t this funny? Tom, come sit next to Robin. Griffin, sit next to Laura.” I stood up and sat next to Robin while Griffin brought his chair over to Laura. “That’s better, ” said Ellen. “Isn’t that better? Daniel Amory

As we walk back, it feels like the city is engulfing us. Adrenalin still pours through our veins. Sparks flow through to our fingers. We've still been running in the mornings, but the city's different then. It's filled with hope and with bristles of winter sunshine. In the evening, it's like it dies, waiting to be born again the next morning. Markus Zusak

Mumbai is the sweet, sweaty smell of hope, which is the opposite of hate; and it's the sour, stifled smell of greed, which is the opposite of love. It's the smell of Gods, demons, empires, and civilizations in resurrection and decay. Its the blue skin-smell of the sea, no matter where you are in the island city, and the blood metal smell of machines. It smells of the stir and sleep and the waste of sixty million animals, more than half of them humans and rats. It smells of heartbreak, and the struggle to live, and of the crucial failures and love that produces courage. It smells of ten thousand restaurants, five thousand temples, shrines, churches and mosques, and of hunderd bazaar devoted exclusively to perfume, spices, incense, and freshly cut flowers. That smell, above all things - is that what welcomes me and tells me that I have come home. Then there were people. Assamese, Jats, and Punjabis; people from Rajasthan, Bengal, and Tamil Nadu; from Pushkar, Cochin, and Konark; warrior caste, Brahmin, and untouchable; Hindi, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Jain, Parsee, Animist; fair skin and dark, green eyes and golden brown and black; every different face and form of that extravagant variety, that incoparable beauty, India. Gregory David Roberts

Jesus Christ is the source–the only source–of meaning in life. He provides the only satisfactory explanation for why we’re here and where we’re going. Because of this good news, the final heartbeat for the Christian is not the mysterious conclusion to a meaningless existence. It is, rather, the grand beginning to a life that will never end. That same Lord is waiting to embrace and forgive anyone who comes to Him in humility and repentance. He is calling your name, just as He called the name of Pete Maravich. His promise of eternal life offers the only hope for humanity. If you have never met this Jesus, I suggest that you seek spiritual counsel from a Christian leader who can offer guidance. You can also write to me, if that would help. Thanks for reading along with me. I hope to meet you someday. If our paths don’t cross this side of heaven, I’ll be looking for you in that eternal city. By all means, Be there!. James C. Dobson

6 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, and I still don’t know which month it was thenor what day it is now. Blurred out linesfrom hangovers to coffee Another vagabond lost to love.4am alone and on my way. These are my finest moments. I scrub my skinto rid me from youand I still don’t know why I cried. It was just something in the way you took my heart and rearranged my insides and I couldn’t recognise the emptiness you left me with when you were done. Maybe you thought my insides would fit better this way, look better this way, to you and us and all the rest. But then you must have changed your mindor made a wrongbecause why did youleave?6 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, and I still don’t know which month it was thenor what day it is now. I replace cafés with crowded bars and empty roads with broken bottlesand this town is healing me slowly but still not slow or fast enough because there’s no right way to do this. There is no right way to do this. There is no right way to do this. . Charlotte Eriksson

You alone in Europe are not ancient oh ChristianityThe most modern European is you Pope Pius XAnd you whom the windows observe shame keeps you From entering a church and confessing this morning You read the prospectuses the catalogues the billboards that sing aloud That's the poetry this morning and for the prose there are the newspapers There are the 25 centime serials full of murder mysteries Portraits of great men and a thousand different headlines(" Zone") . Guillaume Apollinaire

One sip of this wine and you will go mad with drunkenness. You will drop your masks and tear your clothes – destroying everything that separates you from the Lover. Once you taste the fruit of this vine, you will be kicked out of the city of yourself. You will forget the world. You will forget yourself. I tell you: you will become a madman who wanders the streets looking for the Lover once you drink this Wine of Love. Kamand Kojouri

Couples will no longer spend their nights in their houses dedicated to habitation and reception, the customary social reason for banalization. The chamber of love will be more remote from the center of the city: it will completely naturally re-create for the partners the notion of ex-centricity, in a place less open to the light, more hidden, in order to return to the atmosphere of the secret. The contrary move, the search for a center of thought, will proceed by the same technique. Tom McDonough

Finally, the functionalist organization, by privileging progress (i.e. time), causes the condition of its own possibility--space itself--to be forgotten: space thus becomes the blind spot in a scientific and political technology. This is the way in which the Concept-city functions: a place of transformations and appropriations, the object of various kinds of interference but also a subject that is constantly enriched by new attributes, it is simultaneously the machinery and the hero of modernity. Michel De Certeau

This is an ode to life. The anthem of the world. For as there are billionsof different stars thatmake up the skyso, too, are there billions of different humans thatmake up the Earth.Some shine brighter but all are made ofthe same cosmic dust. O the joy of beingin life with all these people! I speak of differencesbecause they are there. Like the different organsthat make up our bodies. Earth, itself, is one large body. Listen to how it howlswhen one human isin misery. When one kills another, the Earth feels the pang in itschest. When one orgasms, the Earth craves a cigarette. Look carefully, these animals are beauty spots that make the Earth’s face lovelier and more loveable. These oceans are the Earth’s limpid eyes. These trees, its hair. This is an ode to life. The anthem of the world. I will no longer speak of differences, for the similaritiesare larger. Look even closer. There may bedistances between our limbs butthere are no spaces betweenour hearts. We long to be one. We long to be in nature andto run wild with its wildlife. Let us celebrate life and living, for it is sacrilegious to be ungrateful. Let us play and be playful, for it is sacrilegiousto be serious. Let us celebrate imperfectionsand make existenceproud of us, for tomorrow isdeath, and this is an ode to life. The anthem of the world. Kamand Kojouri

One of the the things she most liked about the city -apart from all its obvious attractions, the theatre, the galleries, the exhilarating walks by the river- was that so few people ever asked you personal questions. Julia Gregson

I remember when I was twenty-five, ” he said. “No client comes to you when you’re twenty-five. It’s like when you are looking for a doctor. You don’t want the new one that just graduated. You don’t want the very old one, the one shaking, the one twenty years past his prime. You want the seasoned one who has done it so many times he can do it in his sleep though. Same thing with attorneys. . Daniel Amory

She was shocked when she followed her aunt and cousin down into the city proper. The streets were crawling with people, all hurrying to and fro, mindless of one another. They brushed by with barely even a glance, stepping down into the busy roads between horse drawn buses and draymen’s carts with such confidence, seemingly oblivious that they could be run down at any moment. Children dodged in and out amongst them, ragamuffins all, some barefoot. . Lillian White

There was a sky somewhere above the tops of the buildings, with stars and a moon and all the things there are in a sky, but they were content to think of the distant street lights as planets and stars. If the lights prevented you from seeing the heavens, then preform a little magic and change reality to fit the need. The street lights were now planets and stars and moon. Hubert Selby Jr.

Gone were the days where December locked coastal towns down in the grips of labour. Although it was still mostly true, things had changed ; Cape Town had adapted its rhythm to the influx of foreign feet. Tourism was a year -round thing and no longer limited to the summer. Most local tourists still flocked here during this time, but Capetonians didn’t seem too bothered to serve at their beck and call. Sam thought of Cape Town as France , and the rest of the country as England. The city, although relying heavily on local tourism — feigned ignorance when it came to the contribution of these outsiders to its wellbeing. Adelheid Manefeldt

Slowly the truth is loading I'm weighted down with love Snow lying deep and even Strung out and dreaming of Night falling on the city Quite something to behold Don't it just look so pretty This disappearing world We're threading hope like fire Down through the desperate blood Down through the trailing wire Into the leafless wood Night falling on the city Quite something to behold Don't it just look so pretty This disappearing world This disappearing world I'll be sticking right there with it I'll be by your side Sailing like a silver bullet Hit 'em 'tween the eyes Through the smoke and rising water Cross the great divide Baby till it all feels right Night falling on the city Sparkling red and gold Don't it just look so pretty This disappearing world"~ David Gray . David Gray

This was how it was with travel: one city gives you gifts, another robs you. One gives you the heart’s affections, the other destroys your soul. Cities and countries are as alive, as feeling, as fickle and uncertain as people. Their degrees of love and devotion are as varying as with any human relation. Just as one is good, another is bad. Roman Payne

I breathe in.. The sights and smells Of this city I’ve come to know.. So well I gaze.. Across the turquoise ocean Where the waves Liberate my spirit.. From its shell I breathe in.. The brilliant sky line Where the birds Emerge shyly From the dappled sunshine I breathe in.. The gently.. Blowing winds That soothe me Like a mother, around her child I breathe in.. The sounds of laughter Pure and pretty Like the golden-green butterfly I’m always after I breathe in.. The closeness, I have always shared With people, Who almost knew me, Almost cared I breathe in.. The comfort Of my home, The safe walls, The scents of childhood On the pillows I breathe in..the silence Of my own heart Aching with tenderness.. With memories. Of home I breathe.. in.. The fragrance Of love, and moist sand The one.. His roses left.. On both my hands And I just keep on breathing Every moment As much as I can Preserving it, in my body For the day It can’t So I breathe in. Once again. Feeling life's energy Fizzing through my cells Never knowing What awaits me Or what's going to happen to me. Next I breathe in This moment.. Knowing it's either life Or it's death I close my eyes, And breathe in Just believing in myself. Sanober Khan

We are bored in the city, to still discover mysteries on the signs along the street, latest state of humor and poetry, requires getting damned tired... Gilles Ivain (aka Ivan Chtcheglov) Tom McDonough

I thought of the cool, fresh air of the city I'd always dreamed of living in. The art museums and trolleys and the mysterious fog that blanketed it. I could almost smell the cappuccinos I'd planned to drink in bohemian cafes or hear the indie music in the bookstores I would spend my free time in. I pictured the friends I'd make, my kindred art people, and the dorm room I was supposed to move into. . Heather Demetrios

Great artists need great clients. I.M. Pei

I believe that architecture is a pragmatic art. To become art it must be built on a foundation of necessity. I.M. Pei

Do you know what you get when you try to escape? When you drive for miles in a deserted city or swim for hours in a shoreless sea? You get yourself. Kamand Kojouri

Lisbon, to me, is the Lisbon of Pessoa. Just like London is Woolf’s, or rather, Mrs. Dalloway’s. Barcelona is Gaudí's and Rome is da Vinci’s. You see them in every crevice and hear their echoes in every cathedral. I’d like to be the child, or rather, the mother of a city but I neither have a home nor a resting place. My race is humankind. My religion is kindness. My work is love and, well, my city is the walls of your heart. Kamand Kojouri

I’m still lonely and it’s a glorification of something I’m not finished with. I don’t want to be distracted from my work by other people, but the absence of it all distracts me from my work and that’s why I run towards the city, to get a little glimpse of it. Charlotte Eriksson

A little tranquil lake is more significant to my life than any big city in the world Munia Khan

He had heard the voice of London that lives and breathes beneath the rumble of traffic, a voice like the continual high-pitched shriek you hear when you put your head beneath the waves of the sea. It is the sound of millions and millions of creatures living and struggling and dying and being born. It commands those who hear it to eat or be eaten.. Amanda Craig

I saw cities, and roads of marvelous construction. I saw cruelty and greed, but I've seen them here too. I saw a people live a life that was strange in many ways, but also much the same as anywhere else."" Then why are they so cruel?" There was an earnestness to the girl's face, an honest desire to know. "Cruelty is in all of us, " he said. "But they made it a virtue. Anthony Ryan

There's organized confusion on African roads while driving in the cities. If you want to mess up Afican Cities very easy, just fly in 100 Americans put them on the road and tell them to drive. Jidenna

Being captain of such a vessel was not a stressful job, despite the sheer size of the thing. Everything was automated, and this meant that this behemoth could be efficiently handled by a far less seasoned captain. Besides, hiring mature skippers with actual experience would cost real money. And hey, the computers ran everything anyway — and that’s how Bran Johannsen enters this story — as a fine young inexperienced graduate of the Merchant Space Academy in Mars City, who only got his Executive Officer’s ticket four short years ago. . Christina Engela

The sound of diesel fuel rushing through grimy pistons and cylinders below a morning-fogged window bored through his ears like a deep-water drill bit, and the thump of his own heartbeat cursed him for breaking one of his many rules. Luke Taylor

Those who cannot conquer must bend the knee. They must find strength, or serve those of us who have. You are my generals. I will send you out: my hunting dogs, my wolves with iron teeth. When a city closes its gates in fear, you will destroy it. When they make roads and walls, you will cut them, pull down the stones. When a man raises a sword or bow against your men, you will hang him from a tree. Keep Karakorum in your minds as you go. This white city is the heart of the nation, but you are the right arm, the burning brand. Find me new lands, gentlemen. Cut a new path. Let their women weep a sea of tears and I will drink it all. Conn Iggulden

I wish in the city of your heartyou would let me be the streetwhere you walk when you are mostyourself. I imagine the houses: It has been raining, but the rainis done and the children kept homehave begun opening their doors. Robley Wilson

Fear is the short road to death and this world, Changed by the flux of decay: Survival is the exception for weary men. From the new book The Waning Ellen Mae Franklin

What the famous big blue Boy Scout told to a green Kryptonite? What?? YOU rock! Ana Claudia Antunes

There is no limit on the level that the reflections can be at and in a modern environment, such as a city, the albedo can increase the power levels many times of the sky based solar radiation of direct and diffuse combined. The trees prevent the albedo reflections from occurring. Steven Magee

Civic imagination and innovation and creativity are emerging from local ecosystems now and radiating outward, and this great innovation, this great wave of localism that's now arriving, and you see it in how people eat and work and share and buy and move and live their everyday lives, this isn't some precious parochialism, this isn't some retreat into insularity, no. This is emergent. The localism of our time is networked powerfully. And so, for instance, consider the ways that strategies for making cities more bike-friendly have spread so rapidly from Copenhagen to New York to Austin to Boston to Seattle. Think about how experiments in participatory budgeting, where everyday citizens get a chance to allocate and decide upon the allocation of city funds. Those experiments have spread from Porto Alegre, Brazil to here in New York City, to the wards of Chicago. Migrant workers from Rome to Los Angeles and many cities between are now organizing to stage strikes to remind the people who live in their cities what a day without immigrants would look like. In China, all across that country, members of the New Citizens' Movement are beginning to activate and organize to fight official corruption and graft, and they're drawing the ire of officials there, but they're also drawing the attention of anti-corruption activists all around the world. In Seattle, where I'm from, we've become part of a great global array of cities that are now working together bypassing government altogether, national government altogether, in order to try to meet the carbon reduction goals of the Kyoto Protocol. All of these citizens, united, are forming a web, a great archipelago of power that allows us to bypass brokenness and monopolies of control. . Eric Liu

Sometimes it was hard to breathe, knowing how small my world could be. Maybe in San Francisco it wouldn't feel like the universe was conspiring to keep me in a bubble. Heather Demetrios

What appears strange and complex becomes stranger and more complicated once you begin to investigate it. That's the true nature of the world. Bilal Tanweer

I, sometimes, fear that probably I'll just keep changing cities, and may be someday I'll also travel the world, but never find another soul who thinks exactly the way I do. Sanhita Baruah

You have a responsibility to keep your homes, surroundings and city clean. Lailah Gifty Akita

God gave us ground we created a city, God gave us time we need to create a future. Amit Kalantri

Your dreams can change the environment which was not conducive for it at first! However it is a good initiative for the dreams that would change one society to be nursed in another environment, before being transplanted to strive in its original environment for the change process to begin! Israelmore Ayivor

I woke up feeling alone, so lonely. The night before, I had cried myself to sleep. I lay there on the floor, listening to the tube trains passing beneath me. I thought, All those hundreds and thousands and millions of people. London, London - I hate you. I picked myself up and got ready. Tracey Emin

Now you are walking in Paris all alone in the crowd As herds of bellowing buses drive by Love's anguish tightens your throat As if you were never to be loved again If you lived in the old days you would enter a monastery You are ashamed when you discover yourself reciting a prayer You make fun of yourself and like the fire of Hell your laughter crackles The sparks of your laugh gild the depths of your life It's a painting hanging in a dark museum And sometimes you go and look at it close up . Guillaume Apollinaire

The city was alive, and so was he... Kassandra Cross

There was a super-8 steel town somewhere, where all the forgotten things in the cruel world ended up eventually, Mandy was sure of it… this place, she decided, was called Smog City. Rebecca McNutt

The alarming lack of ideas that is recognizable in all acts of culture, politics, organization of life, and the rest is explained by this, and the weakness of the modernist constructers of functionalist cities is only a particularly visible example of it. Intelligent specialists only ever have the intelligence to play the game of specialists: hence the fearful conformity and fundamental lack of imagination that make them admit that this or that product is useful, good, necessary. In fact, the root of the reigning lack of imagination cannot be understood if one does not have access to the imagination of lack--that is to conceiving what is absent, forbidden, and hidden, and yet possible, in modern life. Tom McDonough

There open up, deep inside a city, reflected streets, streets which are double, make-believe streets. One's imagination, bewitched and misled, creates illusory maps of the apparently familiar districts, maps in which the streets have their proper places and usual names but are provided with new and fictitious configurations by the inexhaustible inventiveness of the night. Bruno Schulz

It was common knowledge that big, bad city boys spent the bulk of their time sleeping around, coiffing their hair and posting pictures of food on the internet. Gena Showalter

In one opinion, the house in which you stay, the church you attend and the town in which you reside may not determine the size of your dreams, but they can influence the rate of maturity of what you have planted. Israelmore Ayivor

That weekend the city blushed with a great heat wave but on Monday it rained, cooling the ache in the street’s burn. Daniel Amory

I'm the girl who's desperate to get out of her small town because if she doesn't she knows she'll die. She knows her soul will start to rot, like fruit gone bad. Heather Demetrios

The messengers of Jesus will be hated to the end of time. They will be blamed for all the division which rend cities and homes. Jesus and his disciples will be condemned on all sides for undermining family life, and for leading the nation astray; they will be called crazy fanatics and disturbers of the peace. The disciples will be sorely tempted to desert their Lord. But the end is also near, and they must hold on and persevere until it comes. Only he will be blessed who remains loyal to Jesus and his word until the end. Dietrich Bonhoeffer

In my own shire, if I was sad Homely comforters I had: The earth, because my heart was sore, Sorrowed for the son she bore; And standing hills, long to remain, Shared their short-lived comrade's pain. And bound for the same bourn as I, On every road I wandered by, Trod beside me, close and dear, The beautiful and death-struck year: Whether in the woodland brown I heard the beechnut rustle down, And saw the purple crocus pale Flower about the autumn dale; Or littering far the fields of MayLady-smocks a-bleaching lay, And like a skylit water stood The bluebells in the azured wood. Yonder, lightening other loads, The season range the country roads, But here in London streets I ken No such helpmates, only men; And these are not in plight to bear, If they would, another's care. They have enough as 'tis: I see In many an eye that measures me The mortal sickness of a mind Too unhappy to be kind. Undone with misery, all they can Is to hate their fellow man; And till they drop they needs must still Look at you and wish you ill. A.E. Housman

…So, um, you’re from Rochester? Like, New York?” Jersey asked.“ Yup, we used to live out there, ” Rudger confirmed, nonchalant. “You ever been?”“ Naw, the closest I’ve ever been to there would be… well, believe it or not, New Jersey, the place where my parents named me after. It was crowded, polluted and full of crime… I loved it. Rebecca McNutt

Like most cities, London could be a lonely place... Kassandra Cross

I seek the city because there is nothing sweeter than not being alone in your loneliness. Charlotte Eriksson

She is drawn to the river, and all its hideous, dead-eyed treasures: rot-bloated cats, and cold-meat corpses of unwanted infants, eels plucking at their tender fingers and toes. Emmanuelle De Maupassant

Shirts and jeans litter the asphalt, the empty fabric limbs askew as if they're attempting to escape. Blood smears Sarah's lips as she struggles against the chest of a dirty looking man with a beard. Terror. Terror is the only word my mind can seize on and it forgets what it means. I forget how to think - to move. Brenna Ehrlich

That great condenser of moral chaos, The City. Robert Hughes

Hot weather opens the skull of a city, exposing its white brain, and its heart of nerves, which sizzle like the wires inside a lightbulb. And there exudes a sour extra-human smell that makes the very stone seem flesh-alive, webbed and pulsing. Truman Capote

To the one in the skies, this city must look like a scintillating pattern of speckled glows in all directions, like a firecracker going off amid thick darkness. Right now the urban pattern glowing here is in hues of orange, ginger, and ochre. It is a configuration of sparkles, each dot a light lit by someone awake at this hour. From where the Celestial Gaze is situated, from that high above, all these sporadically lit bulbs must seem in perfect harmony, constantly flickering, as if coding a cryptic message to God. . Elif Shafak

It looks like the whole city is made out of stars. Brian Selznick

Before them is the most beautiful city she has ever seen, has ever imagined. Golden rooftops shine brightly; windows made from diamonds and rubies gleam; tall buildings reach toward the clouds. She is again overwhelmed, this time with gratitude. All this, for her. Victoria Kahler

London is one of the most fascinating, historic, amazing cities in the world! Sophie Kinsella

Beautiful breezes in ugly parts of town give hope to those who want to be free. Darnell Lamont Walker

The city was asleep, and the bookshop felt like a boat adrift in a sea of silence and shadows. Unknown

To walk is to lack a place. It is the indefinite process of being absent and in search of a proper. The moving about that the city mutliplies and concentrates makes the city itself an immense social experience of lacking a place -- an experience that is, to be sure, broken up into countless tiny deportations (displacements and walks), compensated for by the relationships and intersections of these exoduses that intertwine and create an urban fabric, and placed under the sign of what ought to be, ultimately, the place but is only a name, the City..a universe of rented spaces haunted by a nowhere or by dreamed-of places. Michel De Certeau

6 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, and I still don’t know which month it was thenor what day it is now. Blurred out linesfrom hangovers to coffeeanother vagabond lost to love. Charlotte Eriksson

There are no doubts that western governments are willfully inducing radiation sickness into segments of their city populations. Steven Magee

Of course, no government official will ever tell you that the cities may be making the people in them ill. Steven Magee

I waited in vain for someone like me to stand up and say that the only thing those of us who don't believe in god have to believe is in other people and that New York City is the best place there ever was for a godless person to practice her moral code. I think it has to do with the crowded sidewalks and subways. Walking to and from the hardware store requires the push and pull of selfishness and selflessness, taking turns between getting out of someone's way and them getting out of yours, waiting for a dog to move, helping a stroller up steps, protecting the eyes from runaway umbrellas. Walking in New York is a battle of the wills, a balance of aggression and kindness. I'm not saying it's always easy. The occasional "Watch where you're going, bitch" can, I admit, put a crimp in one's day. But I believe all that choreography has made me a better person. The other day, in the subway at 5:30, I was crammed into my sweaty, crabby fellow citizens, and I kept whispering under my breath "we the people, we the people" over and over again, reminding myself we're all in this together and they had as much right - exactly as much right - as I to be in the muggy underground on their way to wherever they were on their way to. Sarah Vowell

I want to bring out the best in a community and contribute something of permanent value. I.M. Pei

Well-lit streets discourage sin, but don't overdo it. William Kennedy

I roused myself from the book which I was dreaming over rather than reading, and left my chambers to meet the cool night air in the suburbs. Wilkie Collins

The stars glittered in the sky and as the number of people at the party grew there were merging conversations and laughter and bodies moving in outlines around the kegs of beer in a curtsy of youth. Daniel Amory

There were thousands of households throughout that city and there was something happening in all of them. There was some kind of story in each, but self-contained. No one else knew. No one else cared. Markus Zusak