Gutter Quotes

Rather in a gutter than on a pedestal. ~ Emil M. Cioran

I know what you want. One month after the ascension of Philippe the Gullible, M. Laclos found in a gutter, deceased. Blamed on a traffic accident. Two months after, King Philippe found in a gutter, deceased - it really is a bad stretch of road. Philippe's heirs and assigns having coincidentally expired, end of the monarchy, reign of M.Danton. ~ Hilary Mantel

It wasn't true, the evidence was faked, but the odd thing is that, whether it s true or not, the consequences are the same: one large group of human beings
or another turned out to be triple-distilled sons-of-bitches, which proves that we all have it in us. Whether the Communists staged a diabolical lie or the Americans sowed plague in China, the one thing that matters is that, as a man, you're
in the gutter. Colonel Babcock. [...] Maybe the West is a civilization, but the Communists are an ugly truth about man. Don't accuse them of inhuman methods: everything about them is human. We're all one great, lovely zoological family, and we shouldn't forget it. That's how you came to be in the gutter Colonel and it's no use your taking refuge on an island and behaving like an ostrich - being English, I mean; the gutter is there, it's you, or rather in you; it flows in your veins. ~ Romain Gary

In front of a big aluminum building with a plywood cross on the roof, I kneel in a puddle and splash water on my face. I wash my mouth out with dirty gutter runoff and spit until I can't taste anything. That holy wooden "t" looms overhead, and I wonder if the Lord might ever find cause to approve of me, wherever and whatever he is.
Have you met him yet, Perry? Is he alive and well? Tell me he's not just the mouth of the sky. Tell me there's more looking down on us than that empty blue skull. ~ Isaac Marion

Every man shall reap what he has sown, from the highest lord to the lowest gutter rat. ~ Anonymous

Lines written for a thirtieth wedding anniversary


Somewhere up in the eaves it began:
high in the roof – in a sort of vault
between the slates and the gutter – a small leak.
Through it, rain which came from the east,
in from the lights and foghorns of the coast –
water with a ghost of ocean salt in it –
spilled down on the path below.
Over and over and over
years stone began to alter,
its grain searched out, worn in:
granite rounding down, giving way
taking into its own inertia that
information water brought, of ships,
wings, fog and phosphor in the harbour.
It happened under our lives: the rain,
the stone. We hardly noticed. Now
this is the day to think of it, to wonder:
all those years, all those years together –
the stars in a frozen arc overhead,
the quick noise of a thaw in the air,
the blue stare of the hills – through it all
this constancy: what wears, what endures. ~ Eavan Boland

In a world where people are too languid to make something of themselves out of effort, I sell them hope. What they do with it is up to them. Invariably they drink it and then hurl it down a gutter, but that's their choice and their freedom. I won't judge them. ~ E.A.A. Wilson

All the words he used in the beginning were gutter words. He heard them and stored them in his brain. Now, as I walk in the street, I look at dogs with secret horror. WHo knows what is hidden in their heads? ~ Mikhail Bulgakov

That's how it is, Rocamadour: in Paris we're like fungus, we grow on the railings of staircases, in dark rooms with greasy smells, where people make love all the time and then fry some eggs and put on Vivaldi records, light cigarettes ... and outside there are all sorts of things, the windows open onto the air and it all begins with a sparrow or a gutter, it rains a lot here, rocamadour, much more than in the country, and things get rusty ... we don't have many clothes, we get along with so few, a good overcoat, some shoes to keep the rain out, we're very dirty, everybody is dirty and good-looking in Paris, Rocamadour, the beds smell of night and deep sleep, dust and books underneath. ~ Julio Cortazar

That girl,' tutted Alsana as her front door slammed, 'swallowed an encyclopedia and a gutter at the same time. ~ Zadie Smith

In the absence of the great majority of guests, all manner of rumors came into the Shalimar Bagh, hooded and cloaked to shield themselves against the elements, and filled the empty places around the dastarkhans: cheap rumors from the gutter as well as fancy rumors claiming aristocratic parentage - an entire social hierarchy of rumor lounged against the bolsters, created by the mystery that enveloped everything like the blizzard. The rumors were veiled, shadowy, unclear, argumentative, often malicious. They seemed like a new species of living thing, and evolved according to the laws laid down by Darwin, mutating randomly and being subjected to the amoral winnowing processes of natural selection. The ~ Salman Rushdie

I need to know that wherever I end up, in the stars or in the gutter, you're along for the ride. ~ Tiffanie DeBartolo

They found our hero in the gutter with a diamond ring and a gun. ~ Eric Clapton

The top of el Raton's head lay forgotten in the gutter across the street. ~ Anson Scott

When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter. ~ Logan Pearsall Smith

Better a king in the gutter,' he said, 'than a slave in an emperor's place ~ Joanne Harris

I tried pulling myself out of the gutter once," Natty snickered. "I got bored. ~ S.J.D. Peterson

I didn't mind being a goof if only he loved me. I felt when we were together that I walked in the gutter and he on the sidewalk. All I did was keep looking up to see if there was love in his eyes ~ Marilyn Monroe

By some estimates, the data-storage curve is rocketing upward at the rate of 800 percent per year. Organizations are collecting so much data they're overwhelmed. Families are no different; we have more things on disk, more photos, more items stored than we'll ever have to allocate time for. "Since Kodachrome made way for jpeg, pictures accumulate on hard drives like wet leaves in a gutter." (Jim Lewis, author of "The King is Dead") ~ Jeff Davidson

You pigs, you. You rut like pigs, is all. You got the most in you, and you use the least. You hear me, you? Got a million in you and spend pennies. Got a genius in you and think crazies. Got a heart in you and feel empties. All a you. Every you ... '
[ ... ]
Take a war to make you spend. Take a jam to make you think. Take a challenge to make you great. Rest of the time you sit around lazy, you. Pigs, you! All right, God damn you! I challenge you, me. Die or live and be great. Blow yourselves to Christ gone or come and find me, Gully Foyle, and I make you men. I make you great. I give you the stars. ~ Alfred Bester

In opposition to sex education: Let the kids today learn it where we did - in the gutter. ~ Pat Paulsen

Altruism accrues little benefit to those lying cold in the gutter. ~ Raymond E. Feist

Bulges of fat appear around rump, deep gutter along back bone and over rump, breast bone covered in fat, thick fat roll on neck. ~ Bonnie R. Gross

Joly, perceiving a cat prowling on a gutter, extracted philosophy from it. "What is the cat?" he exclaimed. "It is a corrective. The good God, having made the mouse, said: 'Hullo! I have committed a blunder.' And so he made the cat. The cat is the erratum of the mouse. The mouse, plus the cat, is the proof of creation revised and corrected. ~ Victor Hugo

Of course I'm going to say "I'm a thug" that's because I came from the GUTTER and I'm still HERE! ~ Tupac Shakur

I froze. It was not guilt that froze me. I had taught myself never to feel guilt. It was not a ghastly sense of loss that froze me. I had taught myself to covet nothing. It was not a loathing of death that froze me. I had taught myself to think of death as a friend. It was not heartbroken rage against injustice that froze me. I had taught myself that a human being might as well look for diamond tiaras in the gutter as for rewards and punishments that were fair. It was not the thought that I was so unloved that froze me. I had taught myself to do without love. It was not the thought that God was cruel that froze me. I had taught myself never to expect anything from Him. What froze me was the fact that I had absolutely no reason to move in any direction. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

When he was creating this picture, Leonardo da Vinci encountered a serious problem: he had to depict Good - in the person of Jesus - and Evil - in the figure of Judas, the friend who resolves to betray him during the meal. He stopped work on the painting until he could find his ideal models.

One day, when he was listening to a choir, he saw in one of the boys the perfect image of Christ. He invited him to his studio and made sketches and studies of his face.

Three years went by. The Last Supper was almost complete, but Leonardo had still not found the perfect model for Judas. The cardinal responsible for the church started to put pressure on him to finish the mural.

After many days spent vainly searching, the artist came across a prematurely aged youth, in rags and lying drunk in the gutter. With some difficulty, he persuaded his assistants to bring the fellow directly to the church, since there was no time left to make preliminary sketches.

The beggar was taken there, not quite understanding what was going on. He was propped up by Leonardo's assistants, while Leonardo copied the lines of impiety, sin and egotism so clearly etched on his features.

When he had finished, the beggar, who had sobered up slightly, opened his eyes and saw the picture before him. With a mixture of horror and sadness he said:

'I've seen that picture before!'


'When?' asked an astonished Leonardo.

'Three year ~ Paulo Coelho

Even I would be moved by his kindness at times, but he could, just as easily, be malicious and cruel. He was both a spirit of amazing loftiness and an irredeemable man of the gutter. He could charge forward, the optimistic leader, even as his heart writhed in a swamp of loneliness. He lived in his own special hell. ~ Haruki Murakami

It's time to demythologise an era and build a new myth from the gutter to the stars. It's time to embrace bad men and the price they paid to secretly define their time. ~ James Ellroy

Sex touches the heavens only when it simultaneously touches the gutter and the mud. ~ George Jean Nathan

Oh, honey," she says when I'm done with my wallowing, "it's like my grandma used to say: Just when you think life's got you in a gutter, a tornado will come along and destroy your house."
"And then you rebuild?" I ask.
"Well, she never mentioned that part, but I suppose it could happen."
I am not cheered up. ~ David Levithan

In any case I would cut myself a path to the throne even if some bastard-born herder had fathered me on a gutter-whore - genealogy can work for me or I can cut down the family tree and make a battering ram. Either way is good. ~ Mark Lawrence

But in London he saw a new response to tragedy: It was not skinned or stuffed; no one kept it in a box, preserving it like an injured bird. People unfastened it, let it fall into the gutter, and walked away, determined not to look back. Instead of adorning themselveswith it, letting it define them, people let the wounds heal over and, touching their scars like talismans, set out to rebuild their world. - James was determined to join them. ~ Cara Wall

Whenever I give a talk about my work I am invariably asked who my influences are. Not what my influences are, but who.. As if the gutter, misunderstandings, memories, sex, dreams, and books matter less than forebears do. After all, in terms of influences, it is as much the guy who mugged me on Tenth Street, or my beloved dog who passed away much too early, as it was Giotto or Diane Arbus. ~ Robert Gober

Even if I had convict ancestry, I wouldn't be ashamed of it. As far as I'm concerned, the real criminals back in those days weren't twelve-year-old boys nicking a loaf of bread or a pair of socks to ward off hunger and blisters. No, it was those who exploited them; keeping the battler in the gutter while they sat around in their manors, sipping tea and admiring portraits of their toffee-nosed great grandfathers. ~ Cameron Trost

Maybe tranquility is the dirt under my nails. I know it's there but I never feel like digging it out. ~ Casey Renee Kiser

Then you start to see things, Lloydy-my-boy. Things you missed from the gutter. Like how the floor of the Wagon is nothing but straight pine boards, so fresh they're still bleeding sap, and if you took your shoes off you'd be sure to get a splinter. ~ Stephen King

For our own part, we learned a great deal about the techniques of love, and because we didn't know the words to denote what we saw, we had to make up our own. That was why we spoke of "yodeling in the canyon" and "tying the tube," of "groaning in the pit," "slipping the turtle's head," and "chewing the stinkweed." Years later, when we lost our own virginities, we resorted in our panic to pantomiming Lux's gyrations on the roof so long ago; and even now, if we were to be honest with ourselves, we would have to admit that it is always that pale wraith we make love to, always her feet snagged in the gutter, always her single blooming hand steadying itself against the chimney, no matter what our present lovers' feet and hands are doing. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

People need trouble - a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don't mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy. ~ William Faulkner

I'd go and get really drunk somewhere ... in the street. Pass out somewhere and sleep in the gutter. ~ Robert Pattinson

What is there to say about love ? You could sweep up all the words and stack them in the gutter and love wouldn't be any different, wouldn't feel any different, the hurt in the heart, the headachy desire that hardly submits to language. What we can't tame we talk about. ~ Jeanette Winterson

My mind may be in gutter, Abigail, but at least I'm looking at an angel! ~ Tom Conrad

You are worrying because day after tomorrow the tribe will be able to buy liquor?" the Bishop asked Mark as he climbed on the plane.
" A little, my lord; I'm afraid some of my best parishioners will end up in the gutter.
" The church belongs in the gutter. It is where it does some of its best work. ~ Margaret Craven

From the twilight of day till the twilight of evening, a leopard, in the last years of the thirteenth century, would see some wooden planks, some vertical iron bars, men and women who changed, a wall and perhaps a stone gutter filled with dry leaves. He did not know, could not know, that he longed for love and cruelty and the hot pleasure of tearing things to pieces and the wind carrying the scent of a deer, but something suffocated and rebelled within him and God spoke to him in a dream: "You live and will die in this prison so that a man I know of may see you a certain number of times and not forget you and place your figure and symbol in a poem which has its precise place in the scheme of the universe. You suffer captivity, but you will have given a word to the poem." God, in the dream, illumined the animal's brutishness and the animal understood these reasons and accepted his destiny, but, when he awoke, there was in him only an obscure resignation, a valorous ignorance, for the machinery of the world is much too complex for the simplicity of a beast. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

The philosophers of industrialism, from Bacon to Bentham, from Smith to Marx, insisted that the improvement of man's condition was the highest requirement of morality. But in what did the improvement consist? The answer seemed so obvious to them that they did not bother to justify it: the expansion and fulfillment of the material wants of man, and the spread of these benefits, from the few who had once preempted them, to the many who had so long lived on the scraps Dives had thrown into the gutter. ~ Lewis Mumford

It was amazing how many colors there were, all running into the gutter in a stream: a dozen shades of blue, twenty different reds, and all that black soot, like a nightmare given form, the insides of a heart, destroyed so easily, done away with before anyone could stop the damage, or salvage what was lost, or even try to save him. ~ Alice Hoffman

So you see, Case, you need us. You need us as badly as you did when we scraped you up from the gutter. ~ William Gibson

There was a word from a myth: sathaz . It was the desire to possess that which can never be yours. It meant senseless, hopeless yearning, the way a gutter child might dream of being king, and it came from the tale of the man who loved the moon. ~ Laini Taylor

Nanny Piggins lost the Vegetable Peeling, Gutter Cleaning, and Long Division Explaining tests as well. She got caught telling Michael, 'Don't bother to learn that. Long division is a waste of brain space, when you can just buy a calculator.' Which is only the truth. ~ R.A. Spratt

I was raised to assume that wealth and rank and privilege would be mine by right," he said painfully. "Through a combination of bad luck and bad judgment, most of those assumptions were beaten out of me. While other young gentlemen raced horses and chased opera dancers, I learned that the world grants no rights beyond the chance to struggle for survival." His mouth twisted. "In the army I was flogged, wore rags, and damned near starved to death. I was forced to face every flaw and weakness in myself, and to learn the harsh lesson that men born to whores and raised in the gutter could be stronger, braver, and more honorable than I ~ Mary Jo Putney

I offered you the world," she said. "When you're dying in a gutter, you remember that." "I'll make a point of it," he said. ~ Neil Gaiman

We grab handfuls of bottles and climb up onto the roof of the house. She stumbles and her foot slips into the gutter sopped with dead leaves. I grab her wrists and pull her clear – sure, she's not the person I'd choose to do this with, but she's my only option so I might as well be nice. Plus I don't want her to drop the vodka. ~ Kirsty Logan

I got one foot in the golden life, one foot in the gutter. So close to the other side, so far from the wonder. I got one foot in the golden life, one foot in the gutter. So sick of the tug of war, that keeps pulling me under ~ 5 Seconds Of Summer

Sara and I are both leaving within the hour. In my carriage."
"Together?" Lily looked startled, and then shook her head. "You can't. Don't you realize what people would say when they discovered that both of you were gone?"
"Nothing they haven't said already." He slid a proprietary arm around Sara's shoulders.
Lily drew her slight frame up as tall as possible, adopting the brisk tone of a chaperone defending her charge. "Where are you planning to go?"
Derek smiled slowly. "None of your damn business, gypsy." Ignoring Lily's sputtering protests, he stared down at his fiancée and raised his brows mockingly.
As she met his glinting green eyes, Sara realized he intended to take her to London and keep her with him for the night. Her nerves jangled with alarm. "I'm not certain it's advisable-" she began diplomatically, but he cut her off.
"Go pack your things."
Oh, the arrogance. But it was part of why she loved him, his single-minded determination to get what he wanted. Only blind, bullying stubbornness had enabled him to climb from the gutter. Now that the prospect of marrying her was within his reach, he planned to ensure it by well and truly compromising her. After tonight there would be no turning back. Sara stared at the broad expanse of his chest, conscious of the weight of his arm across her shoulders, the gentle stroke of his thumb and forefinger against her neck. Well... reprehensible as it was, she wanted the same thing.
"Derek," Li ~ Lisa Kleypas

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. ~ Oscar Wilde

Bowling is like any sport," he says, and I think he's mostly talking to himself. "Pros make it look easy, so anyone thinks they can do it. But it's not easy. You think too much and suddenly the ball is shooting out of the gutter and flying three lanes down and you're kicked out of the alley for recklessness."

I press my lips together to hold in my laugh. "I'm not great at bowling, but I don't think I've ever thrown the ball so hard it jumped three lanes over."

Cole stares stoically down the lane. "Well, it happens."

"Have you done that before?"

"Don't worry about it. ~ Francesca Zappia

I suppose it was the end of the world for her when her husband and her baby were killed. I suppose she didn't care what became of her and flung herself into the horrible degradation of drink and promiscuous copulation to get even with life that had treated her so cruelly. She'd lived in heaven and when she lost it she couldn't put up with the common earth of common men, but in despair plunged headlong into hell. I can imagine that if she couldn't drink the nectar of the gods any more she thought she might as well drink bathroom gin.'
That's the sort of thing you say in novels. It's nonsense and you know it's nonsense. Sophie wallows in the gutter because she likes it. Other women have lost their husbands and children. It wasn't that that made her evil. Evil doesn't spring from good. The evil was there always. When that motor accident broke her defences it set her free to be herself. Don't waste your pity on her, she's now what at heart she always was. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man's moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides? ~ Mark Twain

A slow sly smirk formed on Lucas' lips and Fallon took in a sharp breath. "I'm not playing daddy. I am daddy and you are mommy. Shouldn't we be making out instead of fighting?" Fallon rolled her eyes, poking him harder in the chest. "get your mind out of the gutter Lucas!" She poked him again, and he took her finger in his hand as he grinned down at her. "Poke me one more time Fallon Parker, and I'll poke you back, and not with my finger. ~ Toni Aleo

I think the mirror should be tilted slightly upward when it's reflecting life
toward the cheerful, the tender, the compassionate, the brave, the funny, the encouraging, all those things
and not tilted down to the gutter part of the time, into the troubled vistas of conflict. ~ Greer Garson

The ghosts of women once girls

Somewhere a little girl is reading aloud
in the middle of a dirt road. she smiles
at the sound of her own voice escaping
the spine of the book. she feeds her hunger
to know herself. She has not yet been taught
to dim, she sits with the stars beneath her feet,
a constellation of things to come.
as if a swallowed moon, she glimmers.
Her head wrap rolls out in a gutter, bare feet
scat the earth, the ghosts of women once girls
make bridge of the dust dancing behind her,
she decorates the ground in dimples
she stomps suffering out the spirit
hooves drumming the earth in circles
she holds gladness in her mouth
like a secret teased out of a giggle
joy like her sadness overflows
she is not the opinions of others
she is of visions and imagination
somewhere a little girl is reading aloud in the middle of a dirt road.
she smiles at the sound of her own voice escaping the spine of the book.
She is a room full
of listening, lending herself
to her own words
somewhere

a deep remembering of what was, she survives all. ~ Aja Monet

The alleycats manipulate the blocks with gutter magic ~ Aesop Rock

Love is not a thing you can pick up and throw into the gutter and pick up again as the fancy takes you. I am a person, very unfortunately for you, with a quite peculiar dread of thrusting myself or my affections on any one, of in any way outstaying my welcome. The man I would love would be the man I could trust to love me for ever. I do not trust you. I did outstay my welcome once. I did get thrown into the gutter, and came near drowning in that sordid place. ~ Elizabeth Von Arnim

He had been drunk over in town, and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at. A body would a thought he was Adam, he was just all mud. ~ Mark Twain

Bring it home? All right, let's bring it home. If you was hit by a truck and you was lying out there in that gutter dying, and you had time to sing one song, one song that people would remember before you're dirt, one song that would let God know how you felt about your time here on Earth, one song that would sum you up -- you tellin' me that's the song you'd sing? That same Jimmy Davis tune we hear on the radio all day, about your peace within, and how it's real, and how you're gonna shout it? Or... would you sing somethin' different. Somethin' real. Somethin' you felt. Cause I'm tellin' you right now, that's the kind of song people want to hear. That's the kind of song that truly saves people. ~ Sam Phillips

Looking down, she became aware of the water, which was covered with a film of calcinous hard-water particles of dirt and soap, and of the body that was sitting in it, somehow no longer quite her own. All at once she was afraid that she was dissolving, coming apart layer by layer like a piece of cardboard in a gutter puddle. ~ Margaret Atwood

It is not easy to find the right way. You must learn to govern yourself, you must learn autonomy, you must manage your freedom or drown in it. You may strain the will after Experience because you need it for your books. Or you may perish under the heavy weight of Culture. You may make a fool of yourself anywhere. You may find illumination anywhere - in the gutter, in the college, in the corporation, in a submarine, in the library. No one man holds a patent on it. No man knows what it is likely to tell him to do. ~ Saul Bellow

He asked me innocently, what then had brought me to his home, and without a minutes hesitation I told him an astounding lie. A lie which was later to prove a great truth. I told him I was only pretending to sell the encyclopedia in order to meet people and write about them. That interested him enormously, even more than the encyclopedia. He wanted to know what I would write about him, if I could say.

It's taken me twenty years to answer that question, but here it is. If you would still like to know, John Doe of the city of Bayonne, this is it. I owe you a great deal, because after that lie I told you, I left your house and I tore up the prospectus furnished me by The Encyclopedia Britannica and I threw it in the gutter. I said to myself I will never again go to people under false pretenses, even if is to give them the Holy Bible. I will never again sell anything, even if I have to starve.

I am going home now and I will sit down and really write about people and if anybody knocks at my door to sell me something, I will invite him in and say "Why are you doing this?" and if he says it is because he needs to make a living I will offer him what money I have and beg him once again to think what he is doing. I want to prevent as many men as possible from pretending that they have to do this or that because they must earn a living. It is not true. One can starve to death, it is much better. Every man who voluntarily starves to death jams another cog in the aut ~ Henry Miller

Future For cell mates For the gutter rats For those who are looked in on from the outside, and no one else will ever understand. ~ C.L.Stone

Hitler may have lost the war on the battlefield, but he ended up winning something too," says Marek Halter, "because man in the twentieth century created the concentration camp and revived torture and taught his fellow men that it is possible to close their eyes to the misfortunes of others." Perhaps he is right: There are abandoned children, massacred civilians, innocent people imprisoned, lonely old people, drunks in the gutter, madmen in power. But perhaps he isn't right at all, for there are also Warriors of the Light. And Warriors of the Light never accept what is unacceptable. ~ Paulo Coelho

Life is hard, no? And full of sorrow. The Pilani dance in defiance of death and grief and hardship. They choose to burn before the darkness, rather than to gutter out like a dim flame. ~ Alison Croggon

You gazed at the moon and fell in the gutter. ~ Thomas Fuller

Once a woman turns against you, forget it. They can love you, then something turns in them. They can watch you dying in a gutter, run over by a car, and they'll spit on you. ~ Charles Bukowski

There are, broadly speaking, two types of drinkers. There is the man whom we all know, stupid, unimaginative, whose brain is bitten numbly by numb maggots; who walks generously with wide-spread, tentative legs, falls frequently in the gutter, and who sees, in the extremity of his ecstasy, blue mice and pink elephants ... The other type of drinker has imagination, vision. Even when most pleasantly jingled he walks straight and naturally, never staggers nor falls, and knows just where he is and what he is doing. It is not his body but his brain that is drunken. ~ Jack London

No, this wasn't a 1960s student riot. Out there were the streets. There were no nice dorms for sleeping. No school cafeteria for certain food. No affluent parents to send us checks. There was a ghetto riot on home turf. We already had our war wounds. So this was just another battle. Nobody thought of it as history, herstory, my-story, your-story, or our-story. We were being denied a place to dance together. That's all. The total charisma of a revolution in our CONSCIOUSNESS rising from the gutter to the gut to the heart and the mind was here. Non-existence (or part existence) was coming into being, and being into becoming. Our Mother Stonewall was giving birth to a new era and we were the midwives. ~ New York Public Library

And that through all the ups and downs, nothing really worthwhile is ever permanently lost, even though its creators may be long forgotten. When, perhaps sooner, perhaps later, our civilization finally lies dying in the gutter, some of us will still be looking, as the ancient Mesopotamians taught us to do, at the stars. ~ Paul Kriwaczek

I feel wicked sleeping in a warm bed, while my dearest friends have been knocked down or have fallen into a gutter somewhere out in the cold night. I get frightened when I think of close friends who have now been delivered into the hands of the cruelest brutes that walk the earth. And all because they are Jews! ~ Anne Frank

Life is a cosmic grab-bag. At this moment, somewhere in the world, someone is losing a child, skiing down a mountain, having an orgasm, getting a haircut, lying on a bed of pain, singing on a stage, drowning, getting married, starving in a gutter. In the end, aren't we all that same person? An aeon is a thousand million years, and an aeon ago every atom in our bodies was a part of a star. Pay attention to me, God. We are all a part of your universe, and if we die, part of your universe dies with us. ~ Sidney Sheldon

I came from the gutter and i rose into a flower ~ Rayvon L. Browne

I bet your parents taught you that you mean something, that you're here for a reason. My parents taught me a different lesson, dying in the gutter for no reason at all... They taught me the world only makes sense if you force it to. ~ Batman

You won't see a picture of me rolling around in a gutter, but I sometimes have a photo taken when I'm leaving a club looking tired, and there'll be headlines saying, 'She's out of control'. You can't prepare yourself for those things; you just have to shrug them off. ~ Pixie Lott

Maybe he used to like me, but I doubt he does anymore, now that I've insulted his bird fetish."

Peter smiled. "He's not going to stop liking you over one little argument. I don't think he's the type to just fall for someone and then hate them the next day. We don't live in that kind of world anymore, anyway."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, when there were thousands of possible mates to choose from, it was like being a huge candy store with a billion types of sugary things to choose from. You could sample one of everything and not worry about whether you'd like it much or whatever, because there was always another jar of candy nearby. But now, there's no candy store. There's a single jawbreaker that you found in the gutter. And there are no more jawbreaker factories. No more candy stores. No more refined sugar. That one jawbreaker you found could be the only one you'll ever have again. You aren't going to just eat it and say goodbye."

His analogy wasn't perfect but I saw where he was going with it. "So I'm like a jawbreaker. A dirty one you find in the gutter."

"Yeah. And he likes that candy. It's his favorite. So he doesn't care that it has smelly feet."

I scowled at him. "How do you know he likes jawbreakers so much?"

"I just know. I can tell a good match when I see one. He needs someone spunky and tough, someone different than other girls. That's you." < ~ Elle Casey

A white linen tablecloth
edged with pink roses --
Mama's favorite pattern --
flowed like a bride's train
from sidewalk to curb to gutter.
Papa stared at black boot marks
crossing it like sins. ~ Paul B. Janeczko

I am mad again, he thought. Tears brimmed. He swallowed in a tightened throat. I don't want to be. I'm tired, I'm tired and horny, I'm so tired I can't make sense out of any of it and my mind won't work right half the time I try. I'm thirsty. My head's all filled with kapok coffee wouldn't clear. Still, I wish I had some. Where am I going, what am I doing, stumbling in this smoking graveyard? It's not the pain; only that the pain keeps going on. He tried to let all his muscles go and stepped aimlessly from sidewalk to gutter, his mouth dryer and dryer and dryer. Well, he thought, if it hurts, it hurts. It's only pain. ~ Samuel R. Delany

The dog writhing in the gutter, its back broken by a passing car, knows what it is to be alive. So too with the aged elk of the far north woods, slowly dying in the bitter cold of winter. The asphalt upon which the dog lies knows no pain. The snow upon which the elk has collapsed knows not the cold. But living beings do. ~ George Greenstein

The distance between the limousine and the gutter is a short one. ~ Kinky Friedman

Oliver came up to me and asked me to play something on the piano.

'What would you like?' I asked.

'Anything.'

This would be my thanks for the most beautiful evening of my life. I took a sip from my second martini, feeling as decadent as one of those jazz piano players who smoke a lot and drink a lot and are found dead in a gutter at the end of every film. ~ Andre Aciman

Many individuals are so constituted that their only thought is to obtain pleasure and shun responsibility. They would like, butterfly-like, to wing forever in a summer garden, flitting from flower to flower, and sipping honey for their sole delight. They have no feeling that any result which might flow from their action should concern them. They have no conception of the necessity of a well-organized society wherein all shall accept a certain quota of responsibility and all realize a reasonable amount of happiness. They think only of themselves because they have not yet been taught to think of society. For them pain and necessity are the great taskmasters. Laws are but the fences which circumscribe the sphere of their operations. When, after error, pain falls as a lash, they do not comprehend that their suffering is due to misbehavior. Many such an individual is so lashed by necessity and law that he falls fainting to the ground, dies hungry in the gutter or rotting in the jail and it never once flashes across his mind that he has been lashed only in so far as he has persisted in attempting to trespass the boundaries which necessity sets. A prisoner of fate, held enchained for his own delight, he does not know that the walls are tall, that the sentinels of life are forever pacing, musket in hand. He cannot perceive that all joy is within and not without. He must be for scaling the bounds of society, for overpowering the sentinel. When we hear the cries of the individual strun ~ Theodore Dreiser

Daisy picked up the large, limp cat that was almost too heavy for her. "This is Clawed," she said. "C-l-a-w-e-d," she spelled. "Not like a man's name. My brother named him Clawed because he had been clawed by another cat when he found him hiding in a gutter. Daddy says he hopes Jeremy never finds a wounded skunk. ~ Beverly Cleary

Well, hurry up," said Isabelle. "I didn't get this dressed up to watch you mess around in the gutter with a bunch of motorcycles."

"They are pretty to look at," said Jace, hopping back up on the pavement. "You have to admit that."

"So am I," said Isabelle, who didn't look inclined to admit anything. "Now hurry up. ~ Cassandra Clare

What if something were to happen? What if something suddenly started throbbing? Then they would notice it was there and they'd think their hearts were going to burst. Then what good would their dykes, bulwarks, power houses, furnaces and pile drivers be to them? It can happen any time, perhaps right now: the omens are present. For example, the father of a family might go out for a walk, and, across the street, he'll see something like a red rag, blown towards him by the wind. And when the rag has gotten close to him he'll see that it is a side of rotten meat, grimy with dust, dragging itself along by crawling, skipping, a piece of writhing flesh rolling in the gutter, spasmodically shooting out spurts of blood. Or a mother might look at her child's cheek and ask him: "What's that, a pimple?" and see the flesh puff out a little, split, open, and at the bottom of the split an eye, a laughing eye might appear. Or they might feel things gently brushing against their bodies, like the caresses of reeds to swimmers in a river. And they will realize that their clothing has become living things. And someone else might feel something scratching in his mouth. He goes to the mirror, opens his mouth: and his tongue is an enormous, live centipede, rubbing its legs together and scraping his palate. He'd like to spit it out, but the centipede is a part of him and he will have to tear it out with his own hands. And a crowd of things will appear for which people will have to find new names, st ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

I came out of school one day, and there was this pulp magazine. It was a rainy day, and it was floating toward the sewer in the gutter. So I pick up this pulp magazine, and it's Wonder Stories, and it's got a rocket-ship on the cover, and I'd never seen a rocket-ship. ~ Jack Kirby

Pursuing a dream without God's approval is as dangerous as walking on a rope bridge over a big gutter? Guess the end ... .! ~ Israelmore Ayivor

I wear a necklace of hope with pearly beads. When I met you, it broke, and the beads spilled all over the floor, into the gutters. ~ Karen Quan

The Los Angeles River is small, but mean. People who don't know the truth of it make fun of our river; all they see is a tortured trickle that snakes along a concrete gutter like some junkie's vein. They don't know that we put the river in concrete to save ourselves; they don't know that the river is small because it's sleeping, and that every year and sometimes more it wakes. Before we put the river in that silly trough centered on a concrete plain at the bottom of those concrete walls, it flashed to life with the rain to wash away trees and houses and bridges, and cut its banks to breed new channels almost as if it was looking for people to kill. It found what it looked for too many times. Now, when it wakes, the river climbs those concrete walls so high that wet claws rake the freeways and bridges as it tries to pull down a passing car or someone caught out in the storm. Chain-link fences and barbed wire spine along the top of the walls to keep out people, but the walls keep in the river. The concrete is a prison. The prison works, most of the time. ~ Robert Crais

Because she looks to the sky so often, people think that her life is sweet, that her eyes are dotted with dreamy stars. But quite the opposite is true and I wish they could see - she looks up so much because all around her it's hard to see without breaking her heart. She once saw in a movie a window sign that said "We're all in the gutter; but some of us are looking at the stars." From that movie onwards, she decided to look up! Doesn't mean her life is sweet, doesn't mean her eyes are dotted with dreamy stars. ~ C. JoyBell C.

You should have followed me out! That guy could have just as easily taken advantage of me, Brett!"
"Exactly why I'm here now, making sure you're okay."
"Too bad if Chris ended up dragging me off to a gutter instead of a hospital then, huh? ~ Shaye Evans

Mad Rogan saw me and smiled. And my mind went right into the gutter. ~ Ilona Andrews

It was not heartbroken rage against injustice that froze me. I had taught myself that a human being might as well look for diamond tiaras in the gutter as for rewards and punishments that were fair. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

He'd had his career, his triumphs. Success had brought him nothing but misery; he couldn't handle it. Success had thrown him in the gutter ~ John Grisham