Crowded Streets Quotes

In a big city you become a ghost; you walk on the crowded streets and realise that you are a kind of transparent entity; an indistinct being, a thing which is not something! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Vimes stalked gloomily through the crowded streets, feeling like the only pickled onion in a fruit salad. ~ Terry Pratchett

Life is like walking along a crowded street
there always seem to be fewer obstacles to getting along on the opposite pavement
and yet, if one crosses over, matters are rarely mended. ~ Thomas Huxley

The filth and noise of the crowded streets soon destroy the elasticity of health which belongs to the country boy. ~ Rutherford B. Hayes

You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen, the seven masks I have fashioned an worn in seven lives, I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, "Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves."
Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me.
And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried, "He is a madman." I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, "Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks."
Thus I became a madman. ~ Kahlil Gibran

I have always loved to sit in ferry and railroad stations and watch the people, to walk on crowded streets, just walk along among the people, and see their faces, to be among people on street cars and trains and boats. ~ Ella R. Bloor

But often, in the world's most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us - to know
Whence our lives come and where they go. ~ Matthew Arnold

These friends - and he laid his hand on some of the books - have been good friends to me, and for some years past, ever since I had the idea of going to London, have given me many, many hours of pleasure. Through them I have come to know your great England; and to know her is to love her. I long to go through the crowded streets of your mighty London, to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of humanity, to share its life, its change, its death, and all that makes it what it is. ~ Bram Stoker

Not in the clamor of the crowded street, not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I want you to travel roads that aren't there,
build bridges where none exist,
sing songs that haven't been written.

I want you to love yourself fiercely,
love others courageously,
love life unapologetically.

I want you to shatter expectations,
break out of cages,
and dance in crowded streets while it rains. ~ Marcus Granderson

Esta rolled down the window, letting the hot breath of summer rustle across her face. With it came the familiar smells of the city, stale and heavy with the metallic choke of exhaust and the ripeness of too many people sharing one tiny piece of land. But it was also enticing - the scent of danger and possibility that lived and breathed in the crowded streets. Dirty and frantic though it was, the city - this city - was home. She'd never wanted to be anywhere else. ~ Lisa Maxwell

Silence is the beauty of the empty streets; laughter is the beauty of the crowded streets! There is beauty both in emptiness and in fullness; there is beauty both in absence and in presence! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Whenever it shows itself - hope, that is - hands from the crowded streets reach for it with such violent urgency because of the fear that they may never see it again. They do so without knowing that their desperation frightens hope away. Hope also doesn't know that it is its scarcity. that causes the crowd to lunge at it, shredding its robe. And as it struggles to escape, the fabric scraps land in the hands of some but last only for hours, a day, days, a week, weeks, depending on how much fabric each hand is able to catch. ~ Ishmael Beah

It was drizzling. As people rushed along, they began opening umbrellas over their heads, and all at once the streets were crowded too. Arched umbrella roofs collided with one another. The men were courteous, and when passing Tereza they held their umbrellas high over their heads and gave her room to go by. But the women would not yield; each looked straight ahead, waiting for the other women to acknowledge her inferiority and step aside. The meeting of the umbrellas was a test of strength. At first Tereza gave way, but when she realized her courtesy was not being reciprocated, she started clutching her umbrella like the other women and ramming it forcefully against the oncoming umbrellas. No one ever said "Sorry." For the most part no one said anything, though once or twice she did hear a "Fat cow!" or "Fuck you!" The women thus armed with umbrellas were both young and old, but the younger among them proved the more steeled warriors... [editors note: I love this paragraph, it reminds me of walking down the crowded streets of Philly when I'm late for the train... so frustrating.] ~ Milan Kundera

I miss that time. The cities back then, just after the forests died, were full of wonders, and you'd stumble on them
these princes of the air on common rooftops
the rivers that burst through the city streets so they ran like canals
the rabbits in parking garages
the deer foaling, nestled in Dumpsters like a Nativity. ~ M T Anderson

I became a larger than life figure for one reason only. When you're quoted in the 'Wall Street Journal', the 'New York Times', constantly as the expert in the business people assume you're a lot bigger than you are. And then I had to run like hell to catch up with my own image. ~ Barbara Corcoran

Laugh. Laugh as much as you can. Laugh until you cry. Cry until you laugh. Keep doing it even if people are passing you on the street saying, "I can't tell if that person is laughing or crying, but either way they seem crazy, let's walk faster." Emote. It's okay. It shows you are thinking and feeling. ~ Ellen DeGeneres

I had a Chicago Street Fight a couple of years back in Ring of Honor that was really bloody and really violent. That is probably the closest thing to the Extreme Elimination Chamber I can think of. ~ CM Punk

In Toronto, I grew up taking a subway, I grew up taking a bus. I spent my formative adult years in New York City, walking the streets, taking the subway. You're connected to the larger whole. L.A. is so spread out, and you're so incubated inside those cars and it's so exhausting to deal with the traffic, without really having the human contact. ~ Enrico Colantoni

Hate is on a scale, and is growing on a planetary scale of unprecedented size. The violent left is coming to our streets, all of our streets, to smash, to tear down, to kill, to bankrupt, to destroy. It is will be global in its nature and global in its scope. ~ Glenn Beck

I'm going to walk you home."
"I know the way."
"Maybe, but the streets are dangerous. I don't want anything to happen to you."
"My door is about five feet from yours. What could happen?"
"You never know. ~ Susan Mallery

Even when I was in the orphanage, when I was roaming the street trying to find enough to eat, even then I thought of myself as the greatest actor in the world. I had to feel the exuberance that comes from utter confidence in yourself. Without it, you go down to defeat. ~ Charlie Chaplin

The safe time to invest is when there is blood in the streets. ~ Mark Mobius

They say somebody's 'street smart.' I feel like, if I got intelligence, it's just a country smart. ~ Dolly Parton

The latent abundance of your inner most resources matters less. What matter most is the impact you can make with your inner resources and the distinctive footprints you can leave with what is within you. The excuse not to dare is there for everybody. When you see so many people crowded at the entrance, think of the roofing and if the roofing is too high, think of the next door and if the next door is not penetrable, create a door within the wall. ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

If you wish to write well, study the life about you,
life in the public streets. ~ Horace Mann

Welcome to Hell, where the living conditions went beyond crowded, the job sucked, and the pay sucked even worse. It was like living in, well, Hell. ~ Eve Langlais

I've come to read and hear many unlikely things about the times when people lived in freedom, i.e., the unorganized savage state. But the most unlikely thing, it seems to me, is this: how could the olden day governmental power - primitive though it was - have allowed people to live without anything like our Table, without the scheduled walks, without the precise regulation of mealtimes, getting up and going to bed whenever it occurred to them? Various historians even say that, apparently, in those times, light burned in the streets all night long, and all night long, people rode and walked the streets. This I just cannot comprehend in any way. Their faculties of reason may not have been developed, but they must have understood more broadly that living like that amounted to mass murder - literally - only it was committed slowly, day after day. The State (humaneness) forbade killing to death any one person but didn't forbid the half-killing of millions. To kill a man, that is, to decrease the sum of a human life span by fifty years - this was criminal. But decreasing the sum of many humans' lives by fifty million years - this was not criminal. Isn't that funny? ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

When I burst into the terminal, my eyes swept around, bouncing from person to person in the crowded, bustling space. My stomach fell a little when I didn't see him, but I knew he probably couldn't come this far. He was probably at baggage claim.
I looked around for a sign to point me in the right direction and finally saw one labeled Baggage Claim with an arrow pointing off to the left.
But I didn't follow the arrow.
My eyes fixed on someone standing beneath the sign.
His hands were jammed into the pockets of his well-worn slouchy jeans. The relaxed action pulled the waistband low, highlighting his flat, narrow waist his Henley tee molded to. As usual, he was wearing his varsity jacket and his blond hair was a mess.
My gaze locked on his sapphire-blue eyes and didn't let go. His eyes, ohmigod, his eyes. The blue was so intense it served as an emergency brake on everything in my life. The second I looked at him, everything else came to a screeching halt. I no longer noticed the huge crowd rushing around.
The anxiety-causing flight was just a distant memory, and the two weeks I spent longing for his touch became something I would live through ten times over just to be in this moment with him again.
His lips pulled into a smile and the charm that oozed from every pore in his body made me almost lightheaded. Romeo pulled his hands out of his pockets and straightened, motioning for me.
I rushed across the space separating us, my bag ~ Cambria Hebert

At home in L.A., Sunday is lazy. It's the wife and me lying in bed with coffee, watching 'The Soup' or something funny on TiVo. The kid will occasionally join us. Eventually, breakfast is at a place down the street called Paty's. And we always have some kind of great dinner - my wife makes a great roast beef. ~ Eric McCormack

Life begins to happen.
My hoppped up husband drops his home disputes,
and hits the streets to cruise for prostitutes ~ Robert Lowell

I don't mean to in any way impugn the makers of Bentley, but that car is nuts. When I do drive, I drive a Toyota Prius. So driving around the streets of Albuquerque in a Bentley made me feel so fake-a-rooney. ~ Jessica Hecht

To illustrate the marked atmospheric contrast between the two cities, the writer Frank Carpenter observed that in New York, "a streetcar will not wait for you if you are not just at its stopping point. It goes on and you must stand there until the next car comes along. In Washington people a block away signal the cars by waving their hands or their umbrellas. Then they walk to the car at a leisurely pace, while the drivers wait patiently and the horses rest." While the capital might lack "the spirit of intense energy" that animated New York, Carpenter concluded that Washington, with its broad, clean streets and fine marble buildings (and its shanties generally hidden from view), offered "the pleasanter place in which to live. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

I felt like I was an outsider. I think what happened to me made me develop this street sense of watching people and working out what made them tick, wondering whether I could trust them or not. I went to a lot of schools along the coast in California, made few friends and stayed with aunts, uncles and grandparents while my folks tried to make ends meet. It was tough. We had no money. ~ Tobey Maguire

I had to drive through a very poor and largely Hispanic section of Miami to get to the apartment complex where Casey Martin had died. There were a lot of beautiful women on the sidewalks and at the outdoor cafés, a lot of tough guys and a lot of guys who weren't tough but trying to look like they were. The streets were alive with what criminally passed for music nowadays, and there were smells of cooking in the air that suggested savory tastes. Small, hole-in-the-wall shops marked one end, and some more upscale stores the other. The dividing line between the two was discernible not just by the stores, but the women.

The women and even younger girls at the lower income end seemed softer, friendlier, quicker with a genuine smile. The ones walking into the trendy places were just as pretty, more expensively dressed, but more apt to express scorn than produce a spontaneous smile. The upscale women appeared to be from a different planet. For them, everything was sexist, everything a slight. They were eternal victims, even though the entire world was in their favor. The women at the poor end fell in love, watched out for their men, while the more affluent were stand-offish and demanding, making certain any man "lucky" enough to be with them lived in the right zip code, had the right amount of bling to give them, and above all, had been properly neutered. The balls of their boyfriends and husbands - sometimes they had both - were always in their handbag, somewhere bet ~ Bobby Underwood

You never called me back," he said. "I called you so many times and you never called me back."
Magnus looked at Alec as if he'd lost his mind. "Your city is under attack," he said. "The wards have been broken, and the streets are full of demons. And you want to know why I haven't called you?"
Alec set his jaw in a stubborn line. "I want to know why you haven't called me back."
Magnus threw his hands up in the air in a gesture of utter exasperation. Alec noted with interest that when he did it, a few sparks escaped from his fingertips, like fireflies escaping from a jar. "You're an idiot."
"Is that why you haven't called me? Because I'm an idiot?"
"No." Magnus strode toward him. "I didn't call you because I'm tired of you only wanting me around when you need something. I'm tired of watching you be in love with someone else - someone, incidentally, who will never love you back. Not the way I do."
"You love me?"
"You stupid Nephilim," Magnus said patiently. "Why else am I here? Why else would I have spent the past few weeks patching up all your moronic friends every time they got hurt? And getting you out of every ridiculous situation you found yourself in? Not to mention helping you win a battle against Valentine. And all completely free of charge! ~ Cassandra Clare

This is Harry.
As a boy, Harry was very, very shy.

Some people may have even said he was painfully shy. As if his shyness caused them pain and not the other way around.

There are many things that can cause a person to recede. To look away from other people's eyes or to choose empty hallways over crowded ones. Some shy people try to reach out and try, and nothing seems to come back and then there just comes a point where they stop trying.

In Harry's case he was slapped in the face and called names designed to isolate him, designed to deliver maximum damage. This because he came from a different country and didn't know the right words to use or the right way to say them.

And so, Harry learned how to be still, to camouflage, to be the least.

Some people describe this as receding into a shell, where the stillness hardens and protects. But the eyes, even when they look down and away, are still watching, still looking for some way out or in; painfully shy.

Then in middle school, Harry found theater, where he forced himself to speak through other people's words. And then dance, where he started to speak through the movements of his body. To be so still for so long when you're young, means a lot of pent up energy and it was released there through work, endless work.

If someone carves into a sapling with a knife, the injury is as wide as the entire trunk. Though that mark will never fully heal, you can g ~ Ze Frank

To Wall Street, a firm like BP isn't just a profitable energy company with lots of assets like oil rigs and pipelines and gas stations - it's also a corporation that routinely borrows hundreds of millions of dollars to keep its business up and running. ~ Matt Taibbi

Finding the Father

My friend, this body offers to carry us for nothing– as the ocean carries logs. So on some days the body wails with its great energy; it smashes up the boulders, lifting small crabs, that flow around the sides.

Someone knocks on the door. We do not have time to dress. He wants us to go with him through the blowing and rainy streets, to the dark house.

We will go there, the body says, and there find the father whom we have never met, who wandered out in a snowstorm the night we were born, and who then lost his memory, and has lived since longing for his child, whom he saw only once… while he worked as a shoemaker, as a cattle herder in Australia, as a restaurant cook who painted at night.

When you light the lamp you will see him. He sits there behind the door… the eyebrows so heavy, the forehead so light… lonely in his whole body, waiting for you. ~ Robert Bly

Fancy living in one of these streets, never seeing anything beautiful, never eating anything savoury, never saying anything clever! ~ Winston Churchill

There will be a competition for the memorial. And then it can be developed with trees, with planting. It can become a very beautiful place protected from the streets, because it is below. And it can be something very moving and very private. ~ Daniel Libeskind

Quentin Crisp (to handsome young man on the street): What's the matter, sexy? Don't you like dehydrated fruit? ~ Quentin Crisp

The wind swoops over the tenements on Orchard Street, where some of those starry-eyed dreams have died and yet other dreams are being born into squalor and poverty, an uphill climb. It gives a slap to the laundry stretched on lines between tenements, over dirty, broken streets where, even at this hour, hungry children scour the bins for food. The wind has existed forever. It has seen much in this country of dreams and soap ads, old horrors and bloodshed. It has played mute witness to its burning witches, and has walked along a Trail of Tears; it has seen the slave ships release their human cargo, blinking and afraid, into the ports, their only possession a grief they can never lose. ~ Libba Bray

You can cycle through London on the side streets, which are less polluted - and much more interesting anyway. ~ Deborah Moggach

The star of revolution will rise high above the streets of Moscow, from a sea of blood and fire, and turn into a lodestar to lead a liberated humanity ~ Mikhail Bakunin

The air is crowded with birds
beautiful, tender, intelligent birds
to whom life is a song. ~ George Henry Lewes

Justin: I am falling so in love with you.



Her body electrified. Celeste wiped her eyes and read his text again. The drone of the plane disappeared; the turbulence was no more. There was only Justin and his words.



Justin: I lose myself and find myself at the same time with you.

Justin: I need you, Celeste. I need you as part of my world, because for the first time, I am connected to someone in a way that has meaning. And truth. Maybe our distance has strengthened what I feel between us since we're not grounded in habit or daily convenience. We have to fight for what we have.

Justin: I don't know if I can equate what I feel for you with anything else. Except maybe one thing, if this makes any sense.

Justin: I go to this spot at Sunset Cliffs sometimes. It's usually a place crowded with tourists, but certain times of year are quieter. I like it then. And there's a high spot on the sandstone cliff, surrounded by this gorgeous ice plant, and it overlooks the most beautiful water view you've ever seen. I'm on top of the world there, it seems.

Justin: And everything fits, you know? Life feels right. As though I could take on anything, do anything. And sometimes, when I'm feeling overcome with gratitude for the view and for what I have, I jump so that I remember to continue to be courageous because not every piece of life will feel so in place.

Justin: It's a twenty-foot drop, ~ Jessica Park

I am a feminist, but I'm not an extremist. I know what feminism is, but I'm not all women empowerment, marching in the streets. I'm not a die-hard girl's girl. ~ Scheana Marie

I grew up in the 80s in England: we'd wake up each morning and look out the window to see if the government had finally put Daleks on the streets. ~ Warren Ellis

While looking at a website for liposuction, I learned that it was a six-to eight-week recovery period, the clincher being that, during that time, I would under no circumstances be able to use street drugs. Obviously I had to think of a more realistic approach. ~ Chelsea Handler