Quotes About Urban

I was an easy birth, and I have never regretted it. Not even for a visit would I return to the womb. I never sleep in the fetal position, but on my back or stomach, legs flung wide. I stay out of hot dark closets. I choose rooms with windows, full of moving air. I like scattered light, a moon, stars, but will settle for anything, even that greenish glow found nowhere in nature of a Santa Monica Freeway sign.

Brown birds lined up on telephone wires like beads on a cheap Tijuana necklace.

This is one of the blessings of the urban nature project: without the overtly magnificent to stop us in our tracks, we must seek out the more subversively magnificent. Our sense of what constitutes wildness is expanded, and our sense of wonder along with it.

With my new habit of carrying binoculars everywhere, I feel imbued with a readiness to see, an attitude that my life itself is a kind of field trip. The urban naturalist has the terrific luxury of stepping out her door and into "the field," without long rides or carpools, or putting money in for gas and Dairy Queen. When does the field trip being? Whenever we start paying attention.

If we stand passively by while the centre of each city becomes a hive of depravation, crime and hopelessness…if we become two people, the suburban affluent and the urban poor, each filled with mistrust and fear for the other…then we shall effectively cripple each generation to come.

A Ford Terino jerked to a stop, inches from her knees. Before the driver could honk, Jimena tapped the hood of the car. The man glanced up and her eyes warned him, You're out of your neighborhood. He understood and settled back patiently as if it were normal to stop at a green light in Los Angeles. Once Jimena had crossed the street, the car screeched away.

STEVENSON AND GRIFFITH, STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN A FEDERAL SYSTEM, (6th ed. 2006). THE URBAN LAWYER for permission to use material from New Federal Tax Legislation Affecting Tax Exempt Obligations, by Neil P. Arkuss; reprinted with permission of THE URBAN LAWYER, the national quarterly journal on state and local government of the American Bar Association, as it appeared in Volume 16, Number 4 (Fall 1984), Robert H. Freilich, editor. New York University School

London is often confused with England. The English also live in London but they are only one of the communities which inhabit a true world city.

The bus drives up past the old brick factories of Pawtucket and Woonsocket. Finally, in the distance we can see Boston, where slender homes float above the glass towers. I shudder and minutes seem to take forever, and then the bus arrives.

I miss that time. The cities back then, just after the forests died, were full of wonders, and you'd stumble on them--these princes of the air on common rooftops--the rivers that burst through the city streets so they ran like canals--the rabbits in parking garages--the deer foaling, nestled in Dumpsters like a Nativity.

Merecemos o nosso passo de bichos de dilúvio merecemos que nos ceguem todos os dias merecemos estar sozinhos rodeados de prédios merecemos ter connosco toda a vontade fim princípio moleza de costumes [...]

The terrible thing about having New York go stale on you is that there's nowhere else. It's the top of the world. All we can do is go round and round in a squirrel cage.

Such afternoons the buses are crowded into line like elephants in a circusparade. Morningside Heights to Washington Square, Penn Station to Grant's Tomb. Parlorsnakes and flappers joggle hugging downtown uptown, hug joggling gray square after gray square, until they see the new moon giggling over Weehawken and feel the gusty wind of a dead Sunday blowing dust in their faces, dust of a typsy twilight.

The young man walks fast by himself through the crowd that thins into the night streets;

So, how did you manage to get the story about Bannick and Eileen? It's all hearsay and third-hand and urban legend, all remembered and told by a bunch of drunk rich kids. Right?" "For the most part, yes.

Two thousand lawyers in twenty countries, half of them in New York City alone, a thousand right up there packed together on floors 30 through 65.

It won't take much of a city to be a city for me

In a living city, I could never have noticed so much. Living cities don't hold still.

I never feel as fully awake as when I'm in New York.

I never feel as fully awake as when I'm in NY.

I go amongst the buildings of a city and I see a Man hurrying along - to what?

Why did you step out of my life, you minx? Your new hair-do is fascinating and cosmopolitan." He snatched at her pigtail and pressed it to his wet moustache, kissing it vigorously. "The scent of soot and carbon in your hair excites me with suggestions of glamorous Gotham. We must leave immediately. I must go flower in Manhattan.

We now in the United States have more security guards for the rich than we have police services for the poor districts. If you're looking for personal security, far better to move to the suburbs than to pay taxes in New York.

Urban birds have learned to line their nests with cigarette butts. Nicotine is a powerful insecticide that wards off mites, lice and fleas.