Cities At Night Quotes

As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only desert within our means. ~ Albert Camus

Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connection with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

The Bostonians take their learning too sadly: culture with them is an accomplishment rather than an atmosphere; their "Hub," as they call it, is the paradise of prigs. ~ Oscar Wilde

The cities of the world are concentric, isomorphic, synchronic. Only one exists and you are always in the same one. It's the effect of their permanent revolution, their intense circulation, their instantaneous magnetism. ~ Jean Baudrillard

The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it became New York, London or Tokyo. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

I dont think there is anything on earth more wonderful than those wistful incomplete friendships one makes now and then in an hour's talk. You never see the people again, but the lingering sense of their presence in the world is like the glow of an unseen city at night
makes you feel the teemingness of it all. ~ John Dos Passos

And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there ... Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will. ~ Ezra Pound

We are in danger of making our cities places where business goes on but where life, in its real sense, is lost. ~ Hubert H. Humphrey

If one had but a single glance to give the world, one should gaze on Istanbul. ~ Alphonse De Lamartine

Political life at Washington is like political life in a suburban vestry. ~ Oscar Wilde

Is it just me or is Sunday a bizarre night for a first date? All wrong, like Saturday morning or Monday at 2 p.m. ~ Helen Fielding

Programming (or making music) at night is dreamtime, a period exclusively mental, utterly absorbed, sustained and timeless, placeless, disembodied. ~ Stewart Brand

I always go with the story and character and if those are good and if the setting is something that's scary (horror films seem to always take place at night and the weather's always bad) then I might be interested. ~ David Naughton

If you've slept soundly at night the morning is exhilarating, I suppose. ~ Osamu Dazai

What of that woman you've found?" the Mace asked. "Does she offer no relief at all?"
Pen laughed without humor. "Ten minutes of relief, every time."
"We can find another shield, you know," the Mace told him. "Several of them are ready. Elston would jump at the chance."
"No. It would be a greater torment to be out of the room than in."
"You say that now, but think, Pen. Think about when she takes a husband, or even just a man for the night. How will you feel then, being right outside the door?"
"She may not take either. ~ Erika Johansen

I like to imagine a person's psyche to be like a boardinghouse full of characters. The ones who show up regularly and who habitually follow the house rules may not have met other long-term residents who stay behind closed doors, or who only appear at night. An adequate theory of character must make room for character actors, for the stuntmen and animal handlers, for all the figures who play bit parts and produce unexpected acts. They often make the show fateful, or tragic, or farcically absurd. ~ James Hillman

In order to abandon the uncomfortable world, I began to linger about in abstraction. Because the world suffocated me with inhibition, an unrestrained fantasy life proceeded to remove me from it for release. It was the natural result of my anxiety to seek some tranquil escape, and my dreams became elaborate, wondrous things to explore in moments when trouble would otherwise have eroded my sense of well-being. I became better and better at dreaming, entering the invisible every time I felt uneasy. Over the years, I refined my fantasies, gliding along languidly in my thoughts, until my gestures were either feeble with hypnotism or ethereal with half-sleep. - Beyond the Furthest Edge of Night ~ Cliff Gogh

But it had always been that smile. Not her position
as Henry Wilcox's possible wife nor the possibility
that he could take his enemies down by manipulating
her family. Those hadn't been the things that had
driven him when it came to his feelings for her.
It had been that smile. Through the shadows of the
theater that first night. When their eyes had met. She
had smiled. Simply. Warmly. Looking directly at him,
unaware that she should be afraid. ~ Anne Mallory

We develop all our sciences, archeology, cosmology, psychology, we tabulate and classify and cling to our sacred definitions, our divisions, without any attempt to synthesis, without the humility to see that these are only parts of a total knowledge ... But somehow we ought to be able to keep the idea of the totality of experience and knowledge at the back of our minds even though the front's busy from morning til night with the life cycle of the liver fluke. ~ Maureen Duffy

This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow. ~ Mervyn Peake

When you kill do you also conjoin somehow? In some horrible communion you will never shake? Is that why soldiers come home and scream at night and kill themselves? Because they have become their targets? ~ Peter Heller

What if a pair of us head off on our own?" Nollin proposed, panting. "A small detachment might avoid detection."
"It's a gamble," Ferrin said. "If the duo gets noticed, they'll be defenseless. Who'd you have in mind?"
"Some key delegates," Nollin said. "Perhaps myself and Aram."
Rachel shook her head. Evidently, Nollin had noticed the critical role Aram had played during the escape.
Ferrin laughed openly. "Aram, you've been promoted to essential!"
"I'm generally more appreciated at night," the big man grumbled. "I'm going to the table, Nollin."
"Maybe we should all remain together," Nollin repented. ~ Brandon Mull

Want know how I got these scars? My father was a drinker and a fiend. And one night he goes off crazier than usual. Mommy gets the kitchen knife to defend herself. He doesn't like that. Not one bit. So, me watching, he takes the knife to her, laughing while he does it. He turns to me, and he says, 'why so serious?' He comes at me with the knife. 'Why so serious?!'. He sticks the blade in my mouth. 'Let's put a smile on that face!' And why so serious? ~ Heath Ledger

I made a discovery. It was cold enough to make my eyes water, and I found out that If I kept them almost closed, the moisture diffused the lights, so that everything - the Moon, the stars, the street lamp - seemed to have halos and points of scattered light around it. The snow-banks seemed to glitter like a sea of spun sugar, and all the stars were woven together by a lace of incandescence, so that I was walking through a Universe so wild, so wonderful that my heart nearly broke with its beauty.

"For years, I carried that time and place in mind. It's still there. But the thing is, the Universe didn't make it. I did. I saw it, but I saw it because I made myself see it. I took the stars, which are distant suns, and the night, which is the Earth's shadow, and the snow, which is water undergoing a state-change, and I took the tears in my eyes, and I made a wonderland. No one else has ever been able to see it. No one else has ever been able to go there. Not even I can ever return to it physically, it lies thirty-eight years in the past, in the eye-level perspective of a child, its stereoscopic accuracy based on the separation between the eyes of a child. In only one place does it actually exist. In my mind Elizabeth - in my life.

"But I will die, and where will it be, then?"

Elizabeth looked up at him. "In mind mind a little? Along with the rest of you?"

Hawks looked at her. He reached out and, bending forward as tenderly as a child rece ~ Algis Budrys

After all, for a seaman, to scrape the bottom of the thing that's supposed to float all the time under his care is the unpardonable sin. No one may know of it, but you never forget the thump - eh? A blow on the very heart. You remember it, you dream of it, you wake up at night and think of it - years after - and go hot and cold all over. ~ Joseph Conrad

Now Snape was head to head with Mundungus in an unfamiliar tavern, Mundungus's face looking curiously blank, Snape frowning in concentration.
"You will suggest to the Order of the Phoenix," Snape murmured, "that they use decoys. Polyjuice Potion. Identical Potters. It is the only thing that might work. You will forget that I have suggested this. You will present it as your own idea. You understand?"
"I understand," murmured Mundungus, his eyes unfocused…
Now Harry was flying alongside Snape on a broomstick through a clear dark night: He was accompanied by other hooded Death Eaters, and ahead were Lupin and a Harry who was really George…A Death Eater moved ahead of Snape and raised his wand, pointing it directly at Lupin's back--
"Sectumsempra!" shouted Snape.
But the spell, intended for the Death Eater's wand hand, missed and hit George instead--
And next, Snape was kneeling in Sirius's old bedroom. Tears were dripping from the end of his hooked nose as he read the old letter from Lily. The second page carried only a few words:

could ever have been friends with Gellert Grindelwald. I think her mind's going, personally!
Lots of love,
Lily

Snape took the page bearing Lily's signature, and her love, and tucked it inside his robes. Then he ripped in two the photograph he was also holding, so that he kept the part from which Lily laughed, throwing the portion showing James and Harry back onto the floor, under the chest ~ J.K. Rowling

The thing that keeps me awake at night is a nexus between terrorism and massive destruction ... the possibility that a terrorist organization could either acquire a ready-made weapon or fabricate something improvised that would have a catastrophic effect for us. ~ Michele Flournoy

Travellers at least have a choice. Those who set sail know that things will not be the same as at home. Explorers are prepared. But for us, who travel along the blood vessels, who come to the cities of the interior by chance, there is no preparation. We who were fluent find life is a foreign language. Somewhere between the swamp and the mountains. Somewhere between fear and sex. Somewhere between God and the Devil passion is and the way there is sudden and the way back is worse. ~ Jeanette Winterson

During the night, while Bull and Lucy slept, Edward, with ever-open eyes, stared up at the constellations. He said their names, and then he said the names of the people who loved him. He started with Abilene, and then went on to Nellie and Lawrence and from there to Bull and Lucy, and then he ended again with Abilene: Abilene, Nellie, Lawrence, Bull, Lucy, Abilene.
See? Edward told Pellegrina. I am not like the princess. I know about love. ~ Kate DiCamillo

His tremendous struggles caused such a commotion that our position could only be compared to that of men shooting Niagara in a cylinder at night. ~ Frank T. Bullen

There was this book Dad used to read to me every night called "The Giving Tree." It was a really good book, but the back of it had a picture of the author, this guy named Shel Silverstein.
But Shel Silverstein looks more like a burglar or a pirate than a guy who should be writing books for kids.
Dad must have known that picture kind of freaked me out, because one night after I got out of bed, Dad said: "IF YOU GET OUT OF BED AGAIN TONIGHT, YOU'LL PROBABLY RUN INTO SHEL SILVERSTEIN IN THE HALLWAY."
That really did the trick, Ever since then, I STILL don't get out of bed at night, even if I really need to use the bathroom. ~ Jeff Kinney

The sadness of churches at night moves me; I feel in them the grandeur of nothingness. ~ Anatole France

The back of my neck breaks out in a sweat, and I'm getting nervous. Why is he just standing there, staring at me? "What do you want?" I press, my tone curt.

He opens his mouth but then closes it swallowing.

"Pike, Jesus - "
"The day you left," he blurts out, and I stop.

I wait, listening as a look of fear crosses his eyes.

"The house was so empty," he continues. "Like a quiet that was never there before. I couldn't hear your footsteps upstairs or your hairdryer or anticipate you walking into a room. You were gone. Everything was…" he drops his eyes, "gone."

A ball lodges in my throat, and I feel tears threaten, but I tense my jaw, refusing to let it out.

"But I could still feel you," he whispers. "You were still everywhere. The container of cookies in the fridge, the backsplash you picked out, the way you put all my pictures back in the wrong spot after you dusted my bookshelves." He smiles to himself. "But I couldn't rearrange them, because you were the last to touch them, and I wanted everything the way you had it."

My chin trembles, and I fold my arms over my chest, hiding my balled fists under my arms.

He pauses and then goes on. "Nothing would ever go back to the way it was before you came into my house. I didn't want it to." He shakes his head. "I went to work, and I came home, and I stayed there every night and all weekend, every weekend, because that's where we were together. ~ Penelope Douglas, Birthday Girl

Rahul had been underwhelmed by the New Year's rituals of the rich. "Moronic," he had concluded. "Just people drinking and dancing and standing around acting stupid, like people here do every night."

"The hotel people get strange when they drink," he told his friends. "Last night at the end of the party, there was one hero-good-looking, stripes on his suit, expensive cloth. He was drunk, full tight, and he started stuffing bread into his pants pockets, jacket pockets. Then he put more rolls straight into his pants! Rolls fell on the floor and he was crawling under the table to get them. This one waiter was saying the guy must have been hungry, earlier- that whiskey brought back the memory. But when I get rich enough to be a guest at a big hotel, I'm not going to act like such a loser. ~ Katherine Boo

Others wonder about the possibilities. Maybe the princess cheated on her prince with a dashing knight, ran away with him to live in the wilds, cheated on him with a neighbouring farmer and ended up working the fields for the rest of her life. These are the people who lie awake at night, frightened by the stars above them, intimidated by how the world keeps turning and it doesn't matter if they live or die. These are the people who attempt to stop those thoughts by painting, or writing, or reading... anything to plug up that hole in the brain that gushes out a constant stream of consciousness. ~ Sarah Dalton

I guess we all have a bad night now and then and really screw up. I listened to our earlier stuff and we screwed up a lot. But at least now that we are sober, when we screw up it's for real. ~ Joe Perry

Maybe more youngsters would stay home at nights if they were not afraid to stay alone at nights. ~ Herbert V. Prochnow

There are only two ways out for animals at pounds
being adopted or being killed. And cats have such a low rate of adoption that many pounds, even in some larger cities, don't bother to take them in at all. Not for nothing is it always the "dog pound" and never the "cat pound. ~ Cleveland Amory

It's easy to be an actor at 8 or 9 in the morning, but it's really important to be focused and work hard at 6 and 7 at night, after you've been on the set for 10 or 12 hours. That time counts, too. ~ Clint Howard

Ode to Douglas Adams

In the solar system we inhabit, we live on a small planet we all call Earth. Okay, when I say small, I mean it's small compared to say, oh, Jupiter. Earth is something like a dime compared to Jupiter's beach ball. On this Earth is a fairly large country we all call The United States of America. Of course, when I say fairly large, it's like the U.S. is a piece of broccoli next to China's really large cauliflower. Now that I think of it, that may not be a good comparison as it depends on the restaurant you go to. At the place I was at last night it would be a good comparison as the cauliflower was larger than the broccoli. Not that I'd touch either. I had a hamburger with fries and somebody at the next table had those ghastly vegetables.

From the Preface to "Sex and the American Male." I was saddened by the passing of Douglas Adams and wrote the preface to sound a little like his "Hitchhiker's..." books and to honor him. I hope he's smiling. ~ Jay Williams

He grinned. "And you've got yourself a nickname. I'm thinking 'Shorty'"
"I'm five eight without heels."
"It's not a description. It's a nickname. Get used to it, Shorty."
We stood there for a moment, waiting for the tension to evaporate. When it did, we smiled at each other. "Don't call me Shorty," I told him.
"Okay, Shorty."
"Seriously, that's very immature."
"Whatever you say, Shorty. Let's call it a night."
"Fine by me."
I'd worry about the humiliation in the morning.
Merit/Jonah ~ Chloe Neill

Up telephone poles,
Which rear, half out of leavage
As though they would shriek
Like things smothered by their own
Green, mindless, unkillable ghosts.
In Georgia, the legend says
That you must close your windows
At night to keep it out of the house
The glass is tinged with green, even so,
As the tendrils crawl over the fields.
The night the Kudzu has
Your pasture, you sleep like the dead.
Silence has grown oriental
And you cannot step upon the ground ...
ALL: Kudzu by James Dickey ~ James Dickey

In this era, we have more choice than any group of people ever. When you are out at night, anyone in the universe can contact you instantly. Think about how crazy that is compared to even a few decades ago. ~ Aziz Ansari

Arin heard the door to the barracks creak. The sound brought him immediately to his feet, for only one person would come to his cell this late at night. Then he heard the first heavy footfall, and his hands slackened around the metal bars. The footsteps coming were not hers. They belonged to someone big. Solid, slow. Probably a man.
Torchlight pulsed toward Arin's cell. When he saw who carried it, he pulled away from the bars. He saw a child's nightmare come to life.
The general set the torch in a sconce. He stared, taking in Arin's fresh bruises, his height, his features. The general's frown deepened.
This man didn't look like Kestrel. He was all mass and muscle. But Arin found her in the way her father lifted his chin, and his eyes held the same dangerous intelligence.
"Is she all right?" Arin said. When he received no response, he asked again in Valorian. And because he had already damned himself with a question he couldn't bear not to ask, Arin said something he had sworn he would never say. "Sir."
"She's fine."
A feeling flowed into Arin, something like sleep or the sudden absence of pain.
"If I had my choice, I would kill you," said the general, "but that would cause more talk. You'll be sold. Not right away, because I don't want to be seen reacting to a scandal. But soon.
"I'll be spending some time at home, and I will be watching you. If you come near my daughter, I will forget my better judgment. I will have you torn limb from ~ Marie Rutkoski

They had hoped, hated, loved, suffered, sung, and wept. They had known loss. They had surrounded and comforted themselves with objects. They had driven automobiles. They had walked dogs and pushed children on swing sets and waited in line at the grocery store. They had said stupid things. They had kept secrets, nurtured grudges, blown upon the embers of regret. They had worshipped a variety of gods or no god at all. They had awakened in the night to the sound of rain. They had apologized. They had attended various ceremonies. They had explained the history of themselves to psychologists, priests, lovers, and strangers in bars. They had, at unexpected moments, experienced bolts of joy so unalloyed, so untethered to events, that they seemed to come from above; they had longed to be known and, sometimes, almost were. Heirs ~ Justin Cronin

Basketball teams, after the perfunctory lay-up drill, fall into the crowded isolation and personal style of 10 city kids shooting at the same basket or playing one-on-one. ~ Ted Solotaroff

Her house looked cold from the foggy lea,
And the square of each window a dull black blur
Where showed no stir:
Yes, her gloom within at the lack of me
Seemed matching mine at the lack of her.
The black squares grew to be squares of light
As the eyeshade swathed the house and lawn,
And viols gave tone;
There was glee within. And I found that night
The gloom of severance mine alone ~ Thomas Hardy

I am quite glad you are at home; for these hurries and forebodings by which I have been surrounded all day long, have made me nervous without reason. You are not going out, I hope?'
No; I am going to play backgammon with you, if you like,' said the Doctor.
I don't think I do like, if I may speak my mind. I am not fit to be pitted against you to-night. Is the tea-board still there Lucie? I can't see. ~ Charles Dickens

I once received a letter from an old lady in California who informed me that when the tired reader comes home at night, he wishes to read something that will lift up his heart. And it seems her heart had not been lifted up by anything of mine she had read. I think that if her heart had been in the right place, it would have been lifted up. ~ Flannery O'Connor

I couldn't help but think, This car is taking me to a mental hospital and my mother is treating it like open-mic night at a Greenwich Village café. ~ Augusten Burroughs

A good practice is to ask yourself very sincerely, 'Why was I born?' Ask yourself this question in the morning, in the afternoon, and at night ... every day. ~ Ajahn Chah

The moon reminds me that God made it just for us. And that back when Jesus lived on the earth, He went to sleep every night, just like me, and He, too, likely looked up at it---at the same exact moon I see every night---from wherever He laid His head. And where did he lay His head, compared to where we lay ours every night? On the dirt and grass of the earth. He took nothing for Himself, and now He provides me with a bed, and a roof, and all these friends, and meals...and this music class. ~ Dawn Crandall

I lose sleep at night wondering whether we are intelligent enough to figure out the universe. I don't know. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Fine!" she shouted at it.
"Okay!" shouted a man in a nearby booth at a stain on his tie.
In the kitchen, another man, in a floral apron and a hairnet, nodded at a tub of soaking dishes "Yep," he said.
People often found themselves assenting to inanimate objects in the Moonlight All-Nite. ~ Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Cranor

She kisses my cheek and slides the panel over the mirror. I think my mother could be beautiful, in a different world. Her body is thin beneath the gray robe. She has high cheekbones and long eyelashes, and when she lets her hair down at night, it hangs in waves over her shoulders. But she must hide that beauty in Abnegation. ~ Veronica Roth

I know just how slimy people can be, and how people like that are during the daytime. They don't get slimy at night because they're drunk, they get slimy because they're already slimy to begin with. I ~ Banana Yoshimoto