Quotes About Urban

Nature, with all her cruelty, comes nearer to us than do these crowds of men. A friend explains himself; the earth is explicable — from her we came, and we must return to her. But who can explain Westminster Bridge Road or Liverpool Street in the morning — the city inhaling — or the same thoroughfares in the evening — the city exhaling her exhausted air?

The problem holding everything up thus far is that Homo sapiens is an innately dysfunctional species. We are hampered by the Paleolithic Curse: genetic adaptations that worked very well for millions of years of hunter-gatherer existence but are increasingly a hindrance in a globally urban and technoscientific society. We seem unable to stabilize either economic policies or the means of governance higher than the level of a village.

Manhattan is an accumulation of possible disasters that never happen.

It was a quaint, quiet square, very typical of London, full of an accidental stillness.

the corner by the old Piggly Wiggly building, I felt the familiar edge

A nomadic chicken was pacing across the street

Americans consider the sidewalk an anonymous backstage space, whereas for the French it is the stage itself.

Cities, in many ways, are the best repositories for a love affair. You are in a forest or a cornfield, you are walking by the seashore, footprint after footprint of trodden sand, and somehow the kiss or the spoken covenant gets lost in the vastness and indifference of nature. In a city there are places to remind us of what has been.

Caminó de espaldas hacia la avenida, hacia el lado del río. A los pocos pasos se detuvo, se asustó, y casi se enojó consigo mismo, cuando por encima del rumor de la lluvia y de los autos creyó escuchar un grito que traía su nombre.

A city man is at home anywhere, for all big cities are much alike.

Industrial tourism is a threat to the national parks. But the chief victims of the system are the motorized tourists. They are being robbed and robbing themselves. So long as they are unwilling to crawl out of their cars they will not discover the treasures of the national parks and will never escape the stress and turmoil of the urban-suburban complexes which they had hoped, presumably, to leave behind for a while.

We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope; without it the life of the cities would drive all men into crime or drugs or psychoanalysis.

Industrial Tourism is a threat to the national parks. But the chief victims of the system are the motorized tourists. They are being robbed and robbing themselves. So long as they are unwilling to crawl out of their cars they will not discover the treasures of the national parks and will never escape the stress and turmoil of those urban-suburban complexes which they had hoped, presumably, to leave behind for a while.

A man could be a lover and defender of the wilderness without ever in his lifetime leaving the boundaries of asphalt, powerlines, and right-angled surfaces. We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may never need to set foot in it. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope; without it the life of the cities would drive all men into crime or drugs or psychoanalysis.

I am not interested in living in a city where there isn't a production by Samuel Beckett running.

So you got the cool New Yorkers, and then there are the less-than-cool New Yorkers.

I guess you could say I'm that Cosmopolitan girl!

Ford to City: Drop Dead.

I love New York.

New York, New York,A helluva town.The Bronx is up and the Battery's down,And people ride in a hole in the ground.New York, New York,It's a helluva town!

There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.

The ice age is coming, the sun's zooming inMeltdown expected, the wheat is growing thinEngines stop running, but I have no fear'Cause London is drowning and I live by the river

And yet everything radiates tension, as if the city has been built upon the skin of a balloon and someone is inflating it toward the breaking point.

But on most days, especially the warm ones, life exhausts him; the worsening traffic and graffiti and company politics, everyone grousing about bonuses, benefits, overtime.