Quotes on Cities

I’ve been thinking about that question about what city people can do. The main thing is to realize that country people can’t invent a better agriculture by ourselves. Industrial agriculture wasn’t invented by us, and we can’t uninvent it. We’ll need some help with that.

In architecture it isn't enough to just have the right building that works well. It can also be beautiful. It can also be different. It can create surprise. And surprise is the main thing in a work of art. [] I like and respect Brasí­lia very much. It is a simple city, a rational one. I always defend the urban design of Brasí­lia

The city of Chandigarh is planned to human scale. It puts us in touch with the infinite cosmos and nature. It provides us with places and buildings for all human activities by which the citizens can live a full and harmonious life. Here the radiance of nature and heart are within our reach.

There is a movie called “Fargo” playing right now. It is a masterpiece. Go see it. If you, under any circumstances, see “Little Indian, Big City,” I will never let you read one of my reviews again.

Being in Marin City was like a small town so it taught me to be more [straightforward] with my style. Instead of of being so metaphorical with the rhyme, I was encouraged to go straight at it and hit it dead on and not waste time trying to cover thingsIn Marin City it seemed like things were real country. Everything was straightforward. Poverty was straightforward.

I want to paint Montreal as a rather fantastic city, which it was, because nobody knows today what it was like. And I'm one of the last survivors, or rapidly becoming one.

I got everything I wanted. When I was young in Kansas City, I knew nothing about Frank Sinatra, Billy Eckstine, Ella Fitzgerald, of all those concert halls, of all those countries. I did not know what it was like to direct a band... All I wanted was to be big, to be in show-business, and to travel...and that's what I've been doing all my life.

The city is a fact in nature, like a cave, a run of mackerel or an ant-heap. But it is also a conscious work of art, and it holds within its communal framework many simpler and more personal forms of art. Mind takes form in the city; and in turn, urban forms condition mind.

Cities are the abyss of the human species.

Everyone can access the parts of themselves that are great. I'm just a girl from New York City who decided to do this, after all. Rule the world! What's life worth living if you don't rule it?

Language is a city, to the building of which every human being brought a stone; yet he is no more to be credited with the grand result than the acaleph which adds a cell to the coral reef which is the basis of the continent.

I believe in keeping guns out of our inner cities, and that our leaders must say so in the face of the gun manufacturer's lobby.

Chicago was a town where nobody could forget how the money was made. It was picked up from floors still slippery with blood.

Being a disciple means being constantly ready to bring the love of Jesus to others, and this can happen unexpectedly and in any place: on the street, in a city square, during work, on a journey.

So we draw lines around our property, our counties, our cities, our states, our countries. And, boy, do we act as if those lines are important. I mean, we go to war. We will kill and die to protect those boundaries. Nature couldn't give two hoots about our national boundaries.

Nature is the armory of genius. Cities serve it poorly, books and colleges at second hand; the eye craves the spectacle of the horizon; of mountain, ocean, river and plain, the clouds and stars; actual contact with the elements, sympathy with the seasons as they rise and roll.

I started writing novels while an undergraduate student, in an attempt to make sense of the city of Edinburgh, using a detective as my protagonist. Each book hopefully adds another piece to the jigsaw that is modern Scotland, asking questions about the nation's politics, economy, psyche and history ... and perhaps pointing towards its possible future.

I never write "metropolis" for seven cents when I can write "city" and get paid the same.

I have just been to a city in the West, a city full of poets, a city they have made safe for poets. The whole city is so lovely that you do not have to write it up to make it poetry; it is ready-made for you. But, I don't know - the poetry written in that city might not seem like poetry if read outside of the city. It would be like the jokes made when you were drunk; you have to get drunk again to appreciate them.

Let every man shovel out his own snow and the whole city will be passable.

It's paradoxical that where people are the most closely crowded, in the big coastal cities in the East and West, the loneliness is the greatest... The explanation, I suppose, is that the physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's psychic distance...