Abandoned Buildings Quotes

When I take my old copies of the phenomenologies of religion down from the shelf and thumb through their pages, I feel as if I were walking through the halls of abandoned buildings. My graduate school notes lie heavy in the margins, like scrawls of graffiti on the walls, attesting to the fact that human once contested these spaces. I wonder, each time I close one of these volumes and put it back on the shelf, whether the puff of dust that arises from its binding is not a reminder that systems are built to crumble, and the grander the system, the more spectacular the fall. ~ Malcom David Eckel

I just thought everybody lived around abandoned buildings and crack-heads, ... I lived in the ghetto until I was like 19. I came to Los Angeles, stayed at hotels and stuff. When I got back and I saw what my neighborhood looked like, I started getting scared. ~ Chris Rock

One day or another, it is true, dust, supposing it persists, will probably begin to gain the upper hand over domestics, invading the immense ruins of abandoned buildings, deserted dockyards; and, at that distant epoch, nothing will remain to ward off night-terrors, for lack of which we have become such great book-keepers... ~ Georges Bataille

The human world never figured out the phenomenal expense it took to create New Atlantis, or the unlikelihood that it would ever be possible again. To them, it looked as if we pulled our Gotham out of a cereal box. They saw their abandoned buildings turn into craters overnight, and assumed that that was the sort of thing we would always be capable of doing.
Not a bad rep to have. ~ K.D. Edwards

a poem is never finished, only abandoned, ~ Clive James

Around none o'clock in the evening, Sean and I climbed onto the tar-paper roof of the U-Find-It building. On one side of the roof someone had dumped a pile of copper pipes and plumbing fixtures that had been ripped out of abandoned buildings. It looked like a giant puzzle that only angels could untangle. ~ John Twelve Hawks

My mother and I took over abandoned buildings to sleep in. ~ Mark Webber

You'd think bad guys would get a little creative," Razor whispered as we crawled under the fence. "Old, abandoned buildings are such a cliché. ~ Ada Adams

New ideas must use old buildings ~ Jane Jacobs

When I was in high school, my friends and I would drive out into the country to abandoned houses and structures ... haha ... to ghost hunt. We would scare each other so bad! We would sometimes camp out by the abandoned buildings just to scare ourselves! Such good times. The adrenaline of real fear is so cool! ~ Keegan Allen

This project is so important because it's going to create an environment to inspire people. The RIBA believes that here in the UK we can design buildings and places that bring out the very best in people and motivate them. There is a real desire to see this project happen. ~ Ruth Reed

Chinese buildings are like American buildings, with big footprints. People don't care about daylight or fresh air. ~ Helmut Jahn

If a product or enterprise doesn't constantly reinvent itself, it is superseded, cast aside, abandoned without sentiment in favor of something bigger, newer, and, alas, nearly always uglier. ~ Bill Bryson

When I was very young, most of my childhood heroes wore capes, flew through the air, or picked up buildings with one arm. They were spectacular and got a lot of attention. But as I grew, my heroes changed, so that now I can honestly say that anyone who does anything to help a child is a hero to me. ~ Fred Rogers

I chose the San Francisco earthquake because it's very interesting- although maybe that isn't the word you'd have used if you'd actually been in San Francisco on April 18, 1906. You wouldn't have said, "Wow! This is an interesting earthquake!" while you were running for your life to get away from the collapsing buildings or fires that swept across the city afterward. ~ Belinda Hollyer

I had abandoned Elana; I deserved her uncertainty. I closed my eyes and focused on her touch. Perhaps she wouldn't have understood had I tried to explain it to her, but to me Elana was not only Elana--she was the sad-eyed love of mine who used to bag groceries at Woodley's in Buffalo; she was the sweet one who always sat across from me on the city bus in Niagara Falls; she was the girl I'd picked up hitchhiking in Mobile and dropped off in New Orleans, brash, full of sarcastic humor, but truly lonely and scared; she was the one I'd nabbed pinching Newports for her dad from the Marathon station I'd worked at in Bakersfield (I'd softened and paid for the pack myself); yes, she was the girl playing basketball with all the boys in the park, collecting cans by the side of the road, keeping secret pet kittens in an empty boxcar in the woods, walking alone at night through the rail yards, teaching her little sisters how to kiss, reading out loud to herself, so absorbed by the story, singing sadly in the tub, building a fort from the junked cars out in the meadow, by herself in the front row at the black-and-white movies or in the alley, gazing at an eddy of cigarette stubs and trash and fall leaves, smoking her first cigarette at dusk by a pile of dead brush in the desert, then wishing at the stars-she was all of them, and she was so much more that was just her that I still didn't know. ~ Davy Rothbart

The Founder-Director purposely designed the building in a U-shape, in the interior of which is a courtyard with a central fountain, to reflect the introspective nature of a true Muslim, a universal and perfect man. These interior parts of the building are hidden from the outside in contrast to secularized buildings which face the road and are exposed to the busy traffic of secular life and are therefore without real privacy and introspective spirit. ~ Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud

I began writing about a woman who disappears. Not Barbara, but a fictional woman. She was a botanist who had vanished, perhaps deliberately, in the Burmese jungle in search of a rare, psychedelic mushroom. I wrote about her because, of course, I wanted to disappear. Often those who write about women who have vanished are men with an impulse to eviscerate women, or women with an impulse to eviscerate themselves. I was interested in a different kind of vanishing: the kind where you disentangle yourself from your life and start fresh. People would miss you. You could miss them. You could live at a peaceful distance, loving them in a way that is simpler than the way you love someone you have to deal with in everyday life. You hadn't abandoned them. You were just gone. Mysterious rather than rejecting. Vanishing was a way to reclaim your life. ~ Laura Smith

Painting has been a smiling mistress to many, but she has been a cruel jilt to me; I did not abandon her, she abandoned me. ~ Samuel Morse

I turned to leave, then whirled around and flung my arms around Philippe's massive shoulders. How could such a man ever be broken? "What is it?" Philippe murmured, taken aback. "You will not be alone either, Philippe de Clermont," I whispered fiercely. "I'll find a way to be with you in the darkness, I promise. And when you think the whole world has abandoned you, I'll be there, holding your hand." "How could it be otherwise," Philippe said gently, "when you are in my heart? ~ Deborah Harkness

The sky grew darker, and the light abandoned the daytime, so that we found ourselves always moving in a timeless murk, the only way to discern the hour the taste of sour burps, toothpaste in the morning, redolent in the afternoon of the jellied beef of school cafetetria meals ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

A romantic painting shows a heap of icy debris in a polar light; no man, no object inhabits this desolate space; but for this very reason, provided I am suffering an amorous sadness, this void requires that I fling myself into it; I project myself as a tiny figure, seated on a block of ice, abandoned forever. "I'm cold," the lover says, "Iet's go back"; but there is no road, no way, the boat is wrecked. There is a coldness particular to the lover, the chilliness of the child (or of any young animal) that needs maternal warmth. ~ Roland Barthes

This then will be the shape and the feel of the world: an abandoned shell, signs of old life, curious animals wandering in and out of ruins, the wilderness crowding in, overtaking all human structures and human things. ~ Ben H. Winters

The reason subscription (and RSS) was abandoned was because in a subscription economy the users are in control. In the on-off model, the competition might be more vicious, but its on the terms of the publisher. Having followers instead of subscribers - where readers have to check back on sites often are barraged with a stream of refreshing content laden with ads - is much better for their bottom line. ~ Ryan Holiday

The more sophisticated we get, the more advanced our buildings and vehicles become, the more vulnerable we are. ~ Stephen Ambrose

Come with me, come with me
I'll revisit the solitary mosque near hill brook,
Where men are scarce, come let's see,
I'll hold your hands as I took
The hands of my shiver strains,
Of poignant losses, of miniscule gains,
Come with me across these marsh mellows
Dividing our men into doves and scarecrows!
Come sit with the longing in these abandoned rows
where the frozen eyes burn renunciation stoves,
Let's visit the solitary mosque near hill brook; ~ Ashfaq Saraf

Again and again as president, Reagan let it slip that he concurred with fundamentalists' belief that the world would end in a fiery Armageddon. This did not hurt him politically. The kind of people offended by such talk had already largely abandoned the Republican Party. ~ Rick Perlstein

You ever see that show Storage Wars?" Cooper asked and I shook my head. "These guys bid on abandoned storage lockers. Lots of times, these lockers are full of trash. Sometimes though, they have hidden treasures. That's what you are. The hidden treasure in the trash of your crap family. You have value and I don't want you to think otherwise."
"That's how you see me?" I said, smiling up at him. "As treasure?"
"Of course. You're irreplaceable. ~ Bijou Hunter

What can I say, I'm a sucker for abandoned stuff, misplaced stuff, forgotten stuff, any old stuff which despite the light of progress and all that, still vanishes every day like shadows at noon, goings unheralded, passings unourned, well, you get the drift. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

TODAY-

Turn On Dreams Abandoned Yesterday ~ Kamil Ali

I was finished with assuming the best intentions of those who abandoned me, done trying to assuage my loneliness in barren places. ~ Saleem Haddad

I always lived in old buildings, and I thought about who lived here before. You'd have to be oblivious not to. ~ Ben Katchor

We had a big controversy in the United States when there was a limited number of dialysis machines. In Seattle, they appointed what they called a 'God committee' to choose who should get it, and that committee was eventually abandoned. Society ended up paying the whole bill for dialysis instead of having people make those decisions. ~ Ezekiel Emanuel

walled fields and low, rambling buildings, presenting ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

Buildings are seldom just buildings in downtown Chicago, they are Examples, and not a city on Earth, I swear, is as knowledgeably preoccupied with architectural meaning. Where else would a department store include in its advertisements the name of the architect who created it, or a newspaper property section throw in a scholarly exposition of theoretical design? ~ Jan Morris

We inherit every one of our genes, but we leave the womb without a single microbe. As we pass through our mother's birth canal, we begin to attract entire colonies of bacteria. By the time a child can crawl, he has been blanketed by an enormous, unseen cloud of microorganisms--a hundred trillion or more. They are bacteria, mostly, but also viruses and fungi (including a variety of yeasts), and they come at us from all directions: other people, food, furniture, clothing, cars, buildings, trees, pets, even the air we breathe. They congregate in our digestive systems and our mouths, fill the space between our teeth, cover our skin, and line our throats. We are inhabited by as many as ten thousand bacterial species; those cells outnumber those which we consider our own by ten to one, and weigh, all told, about three pounds--the same as our brain. Together, they are referred to as our microbiome--and they play such a crucial role in our lives that scientists like [Martin J.] Blaser have begun to reconsider what it means to be human. ~ Michael Specter

We don't have a lot of churches in America; we have a lot of really nice brick buildings on finely manicured lawns! Just because someone says they are of the Church or they are Christian, doesn't make it so. ~ Paul David Washer

Someone hanging clothes on a line between buildings, someone shaking out a rug from an open window might have heard hammering, one or two blocks away and thought little or nothing of it. ~ Marie Howe

This doesn't happen. People aren't forgotten like this. Not abandoned like this. ~ Tahereh Mafi

The product of careful continuity is love....Trust, intimacy, intense use, and time are what made these buildings work so well. ~ Stewart Brand

If progress is not the right word for buildings or poems, what is the right way to evaluate cultural change? I suggest integrity. ~ Andy Crouch

How can it be? When we're naked and ashamed and alone in our brokenness, Christ envelops us with His intimate grace. When we're rejected and abandoned and feel beyond wanting, Jesus cups our face: "Come close, my Beloved." When we're dirty and tear-stained and despairing, Jesus Christ is attracted to us and proposes undying love: "All that you're carrying I take... and all that I am is yours." How do you ever get over that? ~ Ann Voskamp

There are times when an old rule should be abandoned or a current rule should not be applied. ~ Sue Grafton

She was one of those stoical, practical women of our country, the kind of woman who has a child with every man who passes through her life and, on top of that, takes in other people's abandoned children, her own poor relatives, and anybody else who needs a mother, a sister, or an aunt; the kind of woman who's the pillar of many other lives, who raises her children to grow up and leave her and lets her men leave too, without a word of reproach, because she has more pressing things to worry about. ~ Isabel Allende

Trudging on foot, loaded with sacks, bundles, and babies, young mothers who had lost their milk, driven out of their minds by the horrors of the journey, abandoned their children, shook the corn out of their sacks onto the ground, and turned back. A quick death, they had decided, was preferable to a slow death by starvation. Better to fall into the clutches of the enemy than to be torn to pieces by some beast in the forest. ~ Boris Pasternak

A daffodil bulb will divide and redivide endlessly. That's why, like the peony, it is one of the few flowers you can find around abandoned farmhouses, still blooming and increasing in numbers fifty years after the farmer and his wife have moved to heaven, or the other place, Boca Raton. If you dig up a clump when no one is nearby and there is no danger of being shot, you'll find that there are scores of little bulbs in each clump, the progeny of a dozen or so planted by the farmer's wife in 1942. If you take these home, separate them, and plant them in your own yard, within a couple of years, you'll have a hundred daffodils for the mere price of a trespassing fine or imprisonment or both. I had this adventure once, and I consider it one of the great cheap thrills of my gardening career. I am not advocating trespassing, especially on my property, but there is no law against having a shovel in the trunk of your car. ~ Cassandra Danz

The traces of our life here will lie cold and still, dreaming, like the brittle eyes of dolls in an abandoned cabin, and the last men will look to them for explanations, or apologies. ~ Tim Cahill

... but Charlie had seen love and prise flare in the brown eyes, burning away every trace of sadness and timidity. Rose Petch, she knew, would never abandon her child the way Charlie's mother had abandoned her. ... Charlie stood, trembling, torn nearly in two by jealousy and longing ... ~ Ellen Renner

Celebrated the evening with one of my building's valets - a twenty-one-year-old kid who only made it five pumps, but brought some good weed and laughed at my jokes. It was a sad start to my new life.
Torre, Alessandra (2014-08-24). Black Lies (Kindle Locations 143-145). Alessandra Torre. Kindle Edition. ~ Alessandra Torre

In the course of writing 'First Light,' I climbed all over and through the Hale Telescope, where I found rooms, stairways, tunnels, and abandoned machines leaking oil. My notebooks show tooth-marks where I gripped them with my teeth while climbing around inside the telescope, and the notebooks are stained with Flying Horse telescope oil. ~ Richard Preston

Perhaps, sir, for our purposes, sir, you shouldn't think of it as your mother abandoned you. Instead, perhaps think of it as she gave you up for adoption slightly later than usual. ~ Nathan Hill

Then we are living in a place abandoned by God," I said, disheartened.
"Have you found any places where God would have felt at home?" William asked me, looking down from his great height. ~ Umberto Eco