Favorite City Quotes

New York City is my favorite city in the world. ~ Halston Sage

Charley looked like someone from a Greek play, Electra, or Cassandra. She looked like someone had just set her favorite city on fire. ~ Kelly Link

There is something in the New York air that makes sleep useless. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

I love Paris - it's one of my favorite cities - and so to shoot a video in Paris was a dream come true. ~ Joe Jonas

Beijing is my favorite city in China. ~ Andrew Lau

I spend a lot of time in Los Angeles, but I probably wouldn't say it's my favorite city. ~ Terry O'Quinn

I've lived in London, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, New York, and Turin. But New York is my favorite city. It has so much energy, so much toughness. ~ Lapo Elkann

Paris is my favorite city in the world. The men are so beyond gorgeous, especially the humpy Arab men. But I could never live in Paris, it's a boutique city. ~ Vaginal Davis

I love New York. It's one of my favorite cities. ~ Victoria Azarenka

Rome is possibly my favorite city in the world. I have such fond memories there - most of them food related. ~ Mallory Jansen

Chicago is seriously my favorite city in the country. People have roots here, which is nice. When you go to Los Angeles, no one is actually from Los Angeles. ~ Bill Rancic

For me, selfishly, Toronto is my favorite city in the world. It's the greatest city and you have the whole world here. ~ Kristen Hager

I wrote my first novel and my second novel in Chicago. It was the place where I became a writer. It's my favorite city. ~ John Green

I have visited Australia several times, and I always try to make a point of going to Melbourne because it's almost my favorite city there, Melbourne and Sydney. But I shouldn't say that because I haven't been everywhere-and I'm very fond of Perth too! ~ Jackie Collins

I can't choose one favorite place because all destinations have something different to offer. My favorite city to explore is Paris; I love the culture of Morocco and the waterfalls in St. Lucia. I just can't choose one. I would like to go back to New Zealand to see more of what it has to offer. ~ Martha Hunt

New York, without a doubt, is my favorite city in the world. ~ Linus Roache

I think New Orleans is such a beautiful city. It looks like a fairytale when you walk through the French Quarter or the Garden District. There is such a lush sense of color, style, architecture - and the people themselves. ~ Anika Noni Rose

Chalmers stopped listening and let his gaze wander over the new city. They were going to call it Nicosia. It was the first town of any size to be built free-standing on the Martian surface; all the buildings were set inside what was in effect an immense clear tent, supported by a nearly invisible frame, and placed on the rise of Tharsis, west of Noctis Labyrinthus. This location gave it a tremendous view, with a distant western horizon punctuated by the broad peak of Pavonis Mons. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Ever since, New York has existed for me simultaneously as a map to be learned and a place to aspire too
a city of things and a city of signs, the place I actually am and the place I would like to be even when I am here. As a kid, I grasped that the skyline was a sign that could be, so to speak, relocated to New Jersey
a kind of abstract, receding Vision whose meaning would always be "out of reach," not a concrete thing signifying "here you are." Even when we are established here, New York still seems a place we aspire to. Its life is one thing
streets and hot dogs and brusqueness
and its symbols, the lights across the way, the beckoning skyline, are another. We go on being inspired even when we're most exasperated. ~ Adam Gopnik

I live in New Hampshire. We're in favor of global warming. Eleven hundred more feet of sea-level rises? I've got beachfront property. You tell us up there, 'By the end of the century, New York City could be underwater,' and we say, 'Your point is?' ~ P. J. O'Rourke

My dad was a homicide cop in the gay neighborhood in the city when gay neighborhoods were desperate, depressing, sad places run by the mob. The only gay people he'd met when I came out to him were corpses. ~ Dan Savage

Patches of hair stuck to his wet cheekbones. His ears were threaded with tiny little wampum earrings, except at the cartilage, where the rings were turquoise. His stubby nose ended abruptly at the bottom of a short bridge. His face tapered with a round chin, a white birthmark under his jaw. He was my favorite picture. He burned into the backs of my eyes. ~ Rose Christo

Although the modern image of the imperial city is dominated by the ruins of the Coliseum and the Forum, the economic life of ancient Rome centered on side streets filled with apartments, shops, and horrea. ~ William J. Bernstein

Smoking had become my favorite thing in the world to do. It was like having instant comfort, no matter where or when. ~ Augusten Burroughs

We speak now or I do, and others do. You've never spoken before. You will. You'll be able to say how the city is a pit and a hill and a standard and an animal that hunts and a vessel on the sea and the sea and how we are fish in it, not like the man who swims weekly with fish but the fish with which he swims, the water, the pool. I love you, you light me, warm me, you are suns.
You have never spoken before. ~ China Mieville

I'd been in Sacramento a day and already noticed the pervasiveness of its homeless problem. The city seemed like California without the masks or pretense: a place where dreams were occasionally made but mostly torn apart. ~ Tom Bissell

Rome - the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar. ~ George Eliot

ISL is a tough place to crack they're the rich and we are the poor you can guarantee that the city is padded with security-" before Kosse could finish Ingra cut in "Yes we are aware of that but the reason we want your help is- ~ Charon Lloyd-Roberts

The point is that we are not doomed because we are homosexual, my dear, we are doomed only if we live in despair because of it, as we did on the beaches and the streets of Suck City. ~ Andrew Holleran

I learned a lot from my Mom. My favorite lesson: remember there is no such thing as a certain way to parent and to remember that you are learning along with your child - it's ok to make mistakes. ~ Regina King

I remember watching Robert Powell many years ago. He did 'Jesus of Nazareth,' and I remember thinking that was probably my favorite. Once I got the role, I didn't want to watch anything, because it only influences what you do. ~ Juan Pablo Di Pace

A protected bicycle lane in the city in a developing country is a powerful symbol, showing that a citizen on the $30 bicycle is as important as one in a $30,000 car ~ Enrique Penalosa

My favorite animal in the park is the grizzly, icnonic, graceful, and with eyes that seem to know, and what they know is sad. ~ Danielle Rohr

Some of the companies we helped start are names you know. An office supply company called Staples - where I'm pleased to see the Obama campaign has been shopping; The Sports Authority, which became a favorite of my sons. We started an early childhood learning center called Bright Horizons that First Lady Michelle Obama rightly praised. ~ Mitt Romney

For every reader, like me, who scheduled his/her classes around their favorite soap opera. ~ Elisabeth Naughton

Never take an elevator in city hall. ~ Harvey Milk

Favorite quote from the dog: "Humans have this nee to express themselves through their mouths, and he supposes that this is because they are so poor with their noses." LOL(less) from the dog who danced ~ Susan Wilson

Oranges were the prince's favorite fruit. He always peeled tem himself, and took some pleasure in tearing the bright skin away to expose the soft wedges within. He liked the spray of tiny citrus beads, he liked the tangy taste, and above all he liked that an orange is a fruit to be eaten piece by piece. ~ Marie Rutkoski

The modern city is ugly not because it is a city but because it is not enough of a city, because it is a jungle, because it is confused and anarchic, and surging with selfish and materialistic energies. ~ G.K. Chesterton

I was stationed in Turkey, Mexico City, South America, Texas, Arizona, so I do know where the Mexican-U.S. border is. ~ Joe Arpaio

Given a shave and a new suit, the pair wrote, a Neanderthal probably would attract no more attention on a New York City subway than some of its other denizens. ~ Elizabeth Kolbert

The pleasures of the damned
are limited to brief moments
of happiness:
like eyes in the look of a dog,
like a square of wax,
like a fire taking city hall,
the county,
the continent,
like fire taking the hair
of maidens and monsters;
and hawks buzzing in peach trees,
the sea running between their claws,
Time
drunk and damp,
everything burning,
everything wet,
everything fine. ~ Charles Bukowski

The strength that comes from human collaboration is the central truth behind civilisation's success and the primary reason why cities existwe must free ourselves from our tendency to see cities as their buildings, and remember that the real city is made of flesh, not concrete. ~ Edward Glaeser

Take responsibility for the city ~ Sunday Adelaja

A German or a Russian mamaloschen (mother tongue) pedigree made for two wildly different translations of the same verse by the American Yiddish poet H. Leyvik.

"Dos turemdike lebn in der turemdike shtot", translated "The towering life of the towering city" (Yiddish turem, "tower," of German origin) became in another version "The imprisoned life of the prison city" (via turme, "prison", from Russian).

I discovered this old "plot" in a recent lecture, a volume on American Yiddish Poetry, by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav. One of those gentle epiphanies that only apparently obscure footnotes or references could reveal.

In a frivolous gesture, I concocted an improbable rendition based on both translations, a slice of contemporary universal metropolitan spleen:

The imprisoned life of the towering city. ~ Harshav

If my mind and my city were the same thing then I was losing my mind. ~ Aleksandar Hemon

I am a greaser," Sodapop chanted. "I am a JD and a hood. I blacken the name of our fair city. I beat up people. I rob gas stations. I am a menace to society. Man, do I have fun!"
"Greaser ... greaser ... greaser ... "Steve singsonged. "O, victim of enviornment, underprivelaged, rotton no-count hood!"
Juvenile delinquent, you're no good!" Darry shouted.
Get thee hence, white trash," Two-Bit said in asnobbish voice. "I am a Soc. I am the privelaged and the well-dressed. I throw beer blasts, drive fancy cars, break windows at fancy parties."
And what do you do for fun?" I inquired in a serious, awed voice.
I jump greasers!" Two-Bit screamed, and did a cartwheel. ~ S.E. Hinton

When I say that I am convinced of these things I speak with too much pride. Far off, like a perfect pearl, one can see the city of God. It is so wonderful that it seems as if a child could reach it in a summer's day. And so a child could. But with me and such as me it is different. One can realise a thing in a single moment, but one loses it in the long hours that follow with leaden feet. It is so difficult to keep 'heights that the soul is competent to gain.' We think in eternity, but we move slowly through time; and how slowly time goes with us who lie in prison I need not tell again, nor of the weariness and despair that creep back into one's cell, and into the cell of one's heart, with such strange insistence that one has, as it were, to garnish and sweep one's house for their coming, as for an unwelcome guest, or a bitter master, or a slave whose slave it is one's chance or choice to be. ~ Oscar Wilde

November 18, 2014: it's a day that should live forever in history. On that day, in the city of Yiwu in China's Zhejiang province, 300 kilometers south of Shanghai, the first train carrying 82 containers of export goods weighing more than 1,000 tons left a massive warehouse complex heading for Madrid. It arrived on December 9th. Welcome to the new trans-Eurasia choo-choo train. At over 13,000 kilometers, it will regularly traverse the longest freight train route in the world, 40% farther than the legendary Trans-Siberian Railway. Its cargo will cross China from East to West, then Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, France, and finally Spain. ~ Anonymous

My favorite actors are Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio and Will Smith - guys like that. ~ Liam Hemsworth

There was a dark aura about him, a hint of caged power in that deceptively casual, sprawled poise. Danger personified.
If this had been a film she would have expected to hear the warning wail of an electric guitar creep over the soft background bustle of the city. ~ Heather R. Blair

Dear V.,
I'm a terrible actor and this city is fucking freezing and I miss you.
- A. ~ Emily St. John Mandel

Women have a favorite room, men a favorite chair. ~ Bernard Williams

I will not hang back here in Alicante while Magnus is in danger. Go without me, and you disrespect our parabatai oaths, you disrespect me as a shadowhunter, and you disrespect the fact that this is my battle too. ~ Cassandra Clare

A song is a favorite song, not because the singer can hit and hold a high note, but because of the words, their meaning. ~ Taylor Swift

Two things significantly distinguish human beings from the other animals; an interest in the past and the possibility of language. Brought together they make a third: Art. The invisible city not calculated to exist. Beyond the lofty pretensions of the merely ceremonial, long after the dramatic connivings of plitical life, like it or not, it remains. Time past eternally present and undestroyed. ~ Jeanette Winterson

What I love about jazz is that it's full of legends, full of myths. It's an oral history because it started in New Orleans and Kansas City, under the radar. ~ Damien Chazelle

The city of Oia is the most magnificently romantic place I've ever been. ~ Lisa Ling