city Quotes

“Probably for every man there is at least one city that sooner or later turns into a girl. How well or how badly the man actually knew the girl doesn’t necessarily affect the transformation. She was there, and she was the whole city, and that’s that.”

“It is my pleasure to introduce your new police commissioner. I do not envy her the next few years. The job has few rewards. The best you can hope for is that when you’re finished with it, things aren’t as lousy as they would’ve been without you. Ellen Yindel is eminently qualified for this job...She face a city of thieves and murderers and honest people too frightened to hope. She faces life-and-death decisions, every hour to come. Some will torture her. She will face a man who is the living spoirit of...something we need. She may be his enemy. She may learn from him.”

“Technology has tended to devaluate the traditional vision-inducing materials. The illumination of a city, for example, was once a rare event, reserved for victories and national holidays, for the canonization of saints and the crowning of kings. Now it occurs nightly and celebrates the virtues of gin, cigarettes and toothpaste.”

“One ought not even consider that a particular citizen belongs to himself, but rather that all belong to the city; for each is part of the city.”

“I live in Artemis, the first (and so far, only) city on the moon. It’s made of five huge spheres called ‘bubbles.‘”

“This moment right now-is where we decide what kind of city Artemis is going to be. We can either act now, or let our home degenerate into syndicate rule for generations. This isn’t some theoretical scenario. They burned down a business. They murdered two people. There’s a huge amount of money in play - they’re not going to stop.”

“He had not been in El Paso for years, and they had developed it considerably since then, he’d heard, along the lines of sin and salvation. They had churches and a Republican or two and a smart of banks and a symphony orchestra and five railroads and a lumberyard and the makings of a library.”

My dear, Is it true that your mind is sometimes like a battering Ram Running all through the city, Shouting so madly inside and out About the ten thousand things That do not matter?”

“In the city if he made a mistake usually there was a way to rectify it, make it all right...Now it was different, and all so quick, all so incredibly quick.”

“It was hard to run on the cobblestone but Hendrika was enjoying the city at last.”

“They left the canals and the highways and the big cities where no one wanted them anymore and went away out in the country.”

“A long time ago, in a certain place in Africa, a small village lay across a river and half a day’s journey from a city where a great king lived. A man named Mufaro lived in this village with his two daughters, who were called Manyara and Nyasha. Everyone agreed that Manyara and Nyasha were very beautiful.”

″ ‘Dear little swallow,’ said the Prince, ‘you tell me of marvelous things, but more marvelous than anything is the suffering of men and women. There is no mystery so great as Misery. Fly over my city, little swallow, and tell me what you see.’ ”

“Way off in the distance she could see the lights of the city. The Little House was curious about the city and wondered what it would be like to live there.”

“Never again would she be curious about the city...Never again would she want to live there...The stars twinkled above her...The new moon was coming up...It was Spring...And all was quiet and peaceful in the country.”

When Alexander becomes lost in the city, his stuffed dog Felix comes to rescue him, only to become lost himself.

“Her trips always ended near a city somewhere Way out in a freight yard with smoke clouding the air, Where a turmoil of trains made a great noisy rumble On crisscrossing tracks, an impossible jumble.”

That night the city wore the mask of a capital.