Gentrified Brooklyn Quotes

Past the sloping green lawn of the park, I entered a new world, regal and historic. Here I walked on swept sidewalks, past pristine buildings and small shops and young mothers or West Indian nannies with children in tow on their way to the playground. Stylish women carried twine-handled shopping bags. The cafes were busy and a church bell praised noon as I ducked underground. ~ Andrew Cotto

Well, I am almost finished. Perhaps if you find something upon which to focus your attention, the pain will remain at bay a while longer." As she leaned forward, Rafe could see the tantalizing display of her breasts above the fabric of her apron. "I think I've found just the thing." Anthony chuckled beside them, but Cassandra was too occupied with her surgery to notice Rafe's gaze. He wanted her to notice. He wanted her to see him as more than the subject of her experiments. He wanted her to see him as a man. He wanted to see if her beautiful breasts felt and tasted as delicious as they looked. He stared, transfixed, until she finished. ~ Brooklyn Ann

The link to my online art portfolio for a chance to be shown in Brooklyn.

https://cheechwizard.see.me/ ~ Neil Leckman

I saw all those great '70s films when I was 9, and no one in my Brooklyn neighborhood cared if a kid watched an R movie. ~ Michael De Luca

Educators, long disturbed by schoolchildren's lagging scores in math and reading, are realizing there is a different and more alarming deficiency: emotional literacy. And while laudable efforts are being made to raise academic standards, this new and troubling deficiency is not being addressed in the standard school curriculum. As one Brooklyn teacher put it, the present emphasis in schools suggests that "we care more about how well schoolchildren can read and write than whether they'll be alive next week." ~ Daniel Goleman

Bennie's corner of Brooklyn looked different every time Sierra passed through it. She stopped at the corner of Washington Avenue and St. John's Place to take in the changing scenery. A half block from where she stood, she'd skinned her knee playing hopscotch while juiced up on iceys and sugar drinks. Bennie's brother, Vincent, had been killed by the cops on the adjacent corner, just a few steps from his own front door. Now her best friend's neighborhood felt like another planet. The place Sierra and Bennie used to get their hair done had turned into a fancy bakery of some kind, and yes, the coffee was good, but you couldn't get a cup for less than three dollars. Plus, every time Sierra went in, the hip, young white kid behind the counter gave her either the don't-cause-no-trouble look or the I-want-to-adopt-you look. The Takeover (as Bennie had dubbed it once) had been going on for a few years now, but tonight its pace seemed to have accelerated tenfold. Sierra couldn't find a single brown face on the block. It looked like a late-night frat party had just let out; she was getting funny stares from all sides--as if she was the out-of-place one, she thought. And then, sadly, she realized she was the out-of-place one. ~ Daniel Jose Older

Now the expectation is that, once the public decides that the artist is gentrified, the public demands that the artist stop growing. And [the public] actually puts all their energy into reasserting or re-establishing what the artist has long ago left behind. Because that's what they want. The source of creativity, the gift that's been given, be damned. ~ Billy Corgan

I really missed going to college. I missed not having that education and that experience. ~ Brooklyn Decker

I had taken on the color of the climate around me and had driven back all the emotion that rose from the Brooklyn streets so that I could belong to the exclusive club of Congress. ~ Emanuel Celler

But I'm sorry, where did you think you were, motherfucker? Connecticut? You're in a magic safe house in Bed-Stuy, borough of Brooklyn. There was a considerable Venn diagram overlap between people who lived in Bed-Stuy and people who had motherfucking guns. Fool. ~ Lev Grossman

Maybe I should know the rules," he says softly.
"Pfft. I'm not a game." I reach out to poke his shoulder, and unexpectedly he catches my finger.
"Sometimes, I'm not so sure. ~ Brooklyn Skye

Fewer American flags [in Brooklyn] than in Florida but more than in San Francisco. ~ Zadie Smith

She has gone back to Brooklyn,' her mother would say. And, as the train rolled past Macmire Bridge on its way towards Wexford, Eilis imagined the years already when these words would come to mean less and less to the man who heard them and would come to mean more and more to herself. She almost smiled at the thought of it, then closed her eyes and tried to imagine nothing more. ~ Colm Toibin

We're all a little broken, on the sidewalk. On the street. In the city. ~ Corey Ann Haydu

I tell everyone who asks me about writing ... almost everyone has an idea for a book, and some even have a great ending, but it's that 290 or so pages in between that are tough! ~ Brooklyn Hudson

There's a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky. It grows in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps. It grows up out of cellar gratings. It is the only tree that grows out of cement. It grows lushly ... survives without sun, water, and seemingly without earth. It would be considered beautiful except that there are too many of it. ~ Betty Smith

we looked, we saw the people trying to dream themselves out. As though there was someplace other than this place. As though there was another Brooklyn. August, ~ Jacqueline Woodson

Beth is the kind of girl you want to stuff into a trunk, wrapped in plastic" - Shane Carver (Quote from: The Carver's Magic) ~ B.L. Brooklyn

Newark might be one of few the places where the politics is tougher than even Brooklyn. ~ Hakeem Jeffries

Griff held his breath while Dante's hand slid against the side of his soft bulge. He tried to remember that they were just two friends joking around on the corner in Brooklyn.( ... ) "Yeah. I coulda ... you don't have to play undersea treasure hunt in my damn pants."
"Gotta watch out for that electric eel." Dante closed his hand over the ring and winked and pulled his fist out. ~ Damon Suede

Far below ran the silver ribbon of the East River, braceleted by shining bridges, flecked by boats as small as flyspecks, splitting the shining banks of light that were Manhattan and Brooklyn on either side. ~ Cassandra Clare

Fighting me would be an exercise in futility, Countess." As if to assert his point, he reached out to grasp her jaw, tilting her chin up to meet his gaze. "As would trying to escape." Narrowing her eyes, she held her voice firm. "Yet I am certain my attempts could be very vexing." For an eternity, they stared at each other, locked in a silent battle of wills. Rafael's scowl deepened before he released her. ~ Brooklyn Ann

Spring came early that year and the sweet warm nights made her restless. She walked up and down the streets and through the park. And wherever she went, she saw a boy and a girl together; walking arm-in-arm, sitting on a park bench with their arms around each other, standing closely and in silence in a vestibule. Everyone in the world but Francie had a sweetheart or a friend. She seemed to be the only lonely one in Brooklyn. ~ Betty Smith

I was chomping at the bit to get my career started - so after I took all the theater courses at Brooklyn College I enrolled in a two year program at AMDA in the city (The American Musical Dramatic Academy) I was there for 6 months and loved it. ~ Didi Conn

But already this isn't quite right. The first apartment I had wasn't on the island at all. It was in Brooklyn Heights, a few blocks away from where I would have been living in the alternate reality of accomplished love, the ghostly other life that haunted me for almost two full years. ~ Olivia Laing

The full moon rose above the harbor as brightly lit tour boats skimmed along the black water, the brilliant cluster of lower Manhattan piled like stacks of coins from a treasure chest in the distance. Up the river, bridges arched across the wide water all the way up the east side, while the Brooklyn side was marked by soft, round lights, like a string of pearls. ~ Andrew Cotto

I'm not sure who has the greater fear, mothers or daughters, that daughters will, in fact, become their mothers. ~ Brooklyn James

Me being in my grandmother's yard in Brooklyn. I must have been about 3. I had this red balloon. I let go of it, and it went up into the sky and just kept going and going. I completely flipped out, because I didn't understand why. ~ Lenny Kravitz

I was raised in Brooklyn and in Baltimore. My father was a bookkeeper. When I was 36 years old, my mother told me I was adopted. ~ Harry Frankfurt

I moved to L.A. after my landlord in Brooklyn tripled my rent. I spent months looking for other places to move to in New York, then one day I was in California eating a grapefruit, and I was like, 'This is what they taste like?' So I decided to move to L.A. and build a studio in my house. ~ Dave Sitek

He winked. "Why? ~ Brooklyn Taylor

She was suddenly very grateful that he only "liked" her, for if the duke had any deep feelings for her, she knew instinctively that he would never let anything dissuade him from pursuing his desires. A strange sensation of warmth curled through her lower belly at the thought. "Good ~ Brooklyn Ann

Living in Brooklyn it's a very fend-for-yourself place. Maybe it's made me a little bit harsh but I don't consider that to be pejorative. ~ Fernando Torres

Carl Furillo was pure ballplayer. In his prime he stood six feet tall and weighed 190 pounds and there was a fluidity to his frame you seldom see, among such sinews. His black hair was thick, and tightly curled. His face was strong and smooth. He had the look of a young indomitable centurion ... I cannot imagine Carl Furillo in his prime as anything other than a ballplayer. Right field in Brooklyn was his destiny. ~ Roger Kahn

I can tell by your eye shadow, you're from Brooklyn, right? ... Me too. My mother has plastic covers on all the furniture. Even the poodle. Looked like a barking hassock walking down the street. ~ Elayne Boosler

And she wondered then if she herself were the problem reading malice into motives when there was none intended ~ Colm Toibin

I'm not a child star, but you could say that I've grown up on TV. I went from being an unknown, down-and-out comic from Brooklyn and the Bronx to being a regular character on a major network comedy called 'Martin.' From there I went on to become the most notable black comic on 'Saturday Night Live' since Eddie Murphy. ~ Tracy Morgan

According to NYPD figures, a contract killing could be had in Brooklyn for a mere $500. More often than not, though, people in New York were killed for free. ~ Bill Fitzhugh

After Iyman Faris's foiled plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, however, most of the al-Qaeda central command had either been killed or captured, and there were no more major incidents.85 But just as the situation seemed to be improving, in March 2003, the United States, Britain, and their allies invaded Iraq, despite considerable opposition from the international community and strong protests throughout the Muslim world. The reasons for this invasion were allegations that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and had furnished support for al-Qaeda, both of which eventually proved to be groundless. ~ Karen Armstrong

Basically, I was a kid growing up with a single mother in Brooklyn. ~ David Blaine

Everything that went on in my life ... it was super important for me to have Camden first. And by that I mean my son and to have that relationship with my son to give me that quiet confidence that I needed as a mother and as a woman. Now with Brooklyn, I am just so at ease; I am so comfortable. ~ Vanessa Lachey

I've lived most of my life in Manhattan, but as close as Brooklyn is to Manhattan, there are people who live there who have been to Manhattan maybe once or twice. ~ Ellen Burstyn

Patra is going to be pissed." Cory says, with a half smirk. Then she holds out the bottle of creamer and says, "Fix it."
"Fix what? Cory! Are you really going to ignore what just happened? That
suck face just threatened to take you and me to jail!"
"She said trial, but that's not really the point I am trying to make."
"I know, but it's the point I
am trying to make!"
"I know that you're scared. I am trying to show you why you shouldn't be."
She pushed the bottle of creamer in front of me again.
"I am not SCARED. I'm angry!" I ignore the creamer.
"Same thing." She shrugs. (From The Carver's Magic) ~ B.L. Brooklyn

To the bankrupt poet, to the jilted lover, to anyone who yearns to elude the doubt within and the din without, the tidal strait between Manhattan Island and her favorite suburb offers the specious illusion of easy death. Melville prepared for the plunge from the breakwater on the South Street promenade, Whitman at the railing of the outbound ferry, both men redeemed by some Darwinian impulse, maybe some epic vision, which enabled them to change leaden water into lyric wine. Hart Crane rejected the limpid estuary for the brackish swirl of the Caribbean Sea. In each generation, from Washington Irving's to Truman Capote's, countless young men of promise and talent have examined the rippling foam between the nation's literary furnace and her literary playground, questioning whether the reams of manuscript in their Brooklyn lofts will earn them garlands in Manhattan's salons and ballrooms, wavering between the workroom and the water. And the city had done everything in its power to assist these men, to ease their affliction and to steer them toward the most judicious of decisions. It has built them a bridge. ~ Jacob M. Appel