Hollow City Quotes

Strange, I thought, how you can be living your dreams and your nightmares at the very same time. ~ Ransom Riggs

I was too dazed to follow right away, because there was something new happening, a wheel inside my heart I'd never noticed before, and it was spinning so fast it made me dizzy. And the farther away she got, the faster it spun, like there was an invisible cord unreeling from it that stretched between us, and if she went too far it would snap - and kill me. I wondered if this strange, sweet pain was love. ~ Ransom Riggs

From the deep and the near South the sons and daughters of newly freed African slaves wander into the city. Isolated, cut off from memory, having forgotten the names of the gods and only guessing at their faces, they arrive dazed and stunned, their heart kicking in their chest with a song worth singing. ~ August Wilson

You can't fight City Hall, but you can goddamn sure blow it up. ~ George Carlin

The Potemkin city of which I wish to speak here is none other than our dear Vienna herself. ~ Adolf Loos

Far to our left I could see a commercial airliner on final approach to Soekarno-Hatta. Far to our right I could see the outline of tall city buildings. The imagery was hard to ignore. In the midst was an impoverished world filled with dangerous radicals. Some believed it was God's will to crash airplanes into buildings. Some recruited children to self-detonate on buses and in coffee shops. It must be incredibly difficult to hold fast to hope when you live in such a world. It's also hard to keep faith with humanity when religious ideology is used as an impetus for war. But I also believe that for every war there is a hero ... and for me, Jakarta will always be Indira's city. ~ Tucker Elliot

The city itself was dead. Some buildings had chunks missing. Bricks and concrete were scattered along sidewalks, debris mingling with bodies. Once this had been a thriving metropolis with a heartbeat all its own. Now it was a corpse, with no morgue big enough to house it. Nothing can ever prepare you for the eeriness of a great city emptied of humanity. In that small room in each of our souls where loneliness makes its home, our fear that we will end up alone and unloved is amplified a million times. ~ Bobby Underwood

If I had to live in a city I think I would prefer New Orleans to any other--both Southern and Catholic and with indications that the Devil's existence is freely recognized. ~ Flannery O'Connor

In the 1991 movie City Slickers, Jack Palance gives Billy Crystal some profoundly simple advice. When Crystal asks him the secret of life, Palance holds up a forefinger, answers with a single word: "One."

Choose one thing. Do it to the best of your ability. Let it go. Pick something else. Repeat endlessly. ~ Lionel Fisher

The wind howled about the bus, and the wipers slooshed heavily back and forth across the windshield, smeering the city into a red and yellow neon wetness. It was early afternoon, but it looked like night through the glass ~ Neil Gaiman

Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City to take back the child you have stolen, for my will is as strong as yours and my kingdom as great. You have no power over me! ~ Jim Henson

For me, 'Bookends' marks the start of my foray into commercial fiction, away from what has always been thought of as more traditional chick lit - single girl in the city trips around in Manolos looking for Mr. Right. ~ Jane Green

Alaska is much larger than France and Germany - combined. Yet its population is less than one-tenth that of New York City. Keep that in mind the next time you hear some environmentalist hysteria about the danger of "spoiling" Alaska by drilling for oil in an area smaller than Dulles Airport. ~ Thomas Sowell

Couples will no longer spend their nights in their houses dedicated to habitation and reception, the customary social reason for banalization. The chamber of love will be more remote from the center of the city: it will completely naturally re-create for the partners the notion of ex-centricity, in a place less open to the light, more hidden, in order to return to the atmosphere of the secret. The contrary move, the search for a center of thought, will proceed by the same technique. ~ Tom McDonough

It's redaction city when it comes to his online identity. ~ Ryan Quinn

The Fairy Queen has sent you to do brave deeds in this world. That High City that you see is in another world. Before you climb the path to it and hang your shield on its wall, go down into the valley and fight the dragon that you were sent to fight. ~ Margaret Hodges

I don't know, I like to go on really different types of dates. Going someplace new or some new part of the city, something that's not your average thing. Something where you just go have an adventure together. ~ Rachel McAdams

- I picked these last night. I want you to have them.
- Th-thanks. What kind of flowers are these? They're pretty.
- The flowers themselves aren't important. It would be better if the blossoms fell off right away.
- What!?
- They're poppies. When the petals fall off, you can cut the seed pods to make opium. Basically, these are the raw materials for heroin. If you sell that in the city, you should bring in an impressive amount of money. ~ Shouji Gatou

In Washington Square, one could still feel the characters of Henry James and the presence of the author himself. Entering the perimeters of the white arch, one was greeted by the sounds of bongos and acoustic guitars, protest singers, political arguments, activists leafleting, older chess players challenged by the young. This open atmosphere was something I had not experienced, simple freedom that did not seem to be oppressive to anyone. ~ Patti Smith Just Kids

Where do they teach you to talk like this? In some Panama City "Sailor wanna hump-hump" bar, or is it getaway day and your last shot at his whiskey? Sell crazy someplace else, we're all stocked up here. ~ Melvin Udall Played By Jack Nicholson In AS GOOD AS IT GETS.

I came across humanity in Istanbul, and all I know about life comes from Istanbul, and definitely, I am writing about Istanbul. I also love the city because I live there, it has formed me, and it's me. Of course it is natural. If somebody lived all his life in Delhi, he will write about Delhi. ~ Orhan Pamuk

As ever in the family Goodman, someone would have to swallow feelings here, and it was easier that it be Mercer. ~ Garth Risk Hallberg

People go to LA to "find themselves", they come to New York to become someone new. ~ Lindsey Kelk

If you aren't born here, to be a real New Yorker, you have to bring your talent, be a successful mentor, and support the New Yorkers who made the city by giving back. ~ Daniel Boulud

A city like Bombay, like New York, that is a recent creation on the planet and does not have a substantial indigenous population, is full of restless people. Those who have come here have not been at ease somewhere else. And unlike others who may have been equally uncomfortable wherever they came from, these people got up and moved. As I have discovered, having once moved, it is difficult to stop moving. ~ Suketu Mehta

Really, nobody was there?" I asked.
"Well, nobody important," he said, putting his glasses back on and blinking. ~ Daniel Amory

My earliest recollections are of the teeming East Side where I was born. This Hester Street and its surrounding streets were the most densely populated of any city on Earth; and looking back at it, I realize what I owe to its unique and crowded humanity. ~ Jacob Epstein

The attitude of the city on his action was of no importance to him, not because he was going to leave the city, but because any outside attitude on the situation seemed superficial. He was completely indifferent to popular opinion. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Unlike New York or Chicago, once you were inside Boston, any point in the city was fairly convenient to any other. ~ Matthew Pearl

Money and office and success are the consolations of impotence. Fortune turns kind to such solid people and lets them suck their bone in peace. She flecks her whip upon flesh that is more alive, upon that stream of hungry boys and girls who tramp the streets of every city, recognizable by their pride and discontent, who are the Future, and who possess the treasure of creative power. ~ Willa Cather

I am from a city (Glasgow) that is not unlike Liverpool. I am joining the people's football club. The majority of people you meet on the street are Everton fans. It is a fantastic opportunity, something you dream about. I said 'yes' right away as it is such a big club. ~ David Moyes

We recently had a referendum in New York about extending the forest preserve. The city voted for it by a large majority; yet as I walk the streets I do not see afforestation written with conviction on the harried faces of my fellow citizens. ~ Learned Hand

Everything is gratuitous, this garden, this city and myself. When you suddenly realize it, it makes you feel sick and everything begins to drift ... that's nausea. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

And men are subject, also, to this same Law of Attraction. Go into any cheap boarding house district in any city and there you will find people of the same general trend of mind associated together. On the other hand, go into any prosperous community and there you will find people of the same general tendencies associated together. Men who are successful always seek the company of others who are successful, while men who are on the ragged side of life always seek the company of those who are in similar circumstances. "Misery loves company. ~ Napoleon Hill

His words hung hollow between us, the knowledge that I'd given him my virginity, my body, my heart, my everything, only for him to walk away in a few weeks shredded me. ~ Aria Cole

New York is great for busy creative types. The city has a pulse that races, and you either keep up with it or you leave. ~ Raina Telgemeier

I am writing about people who are alive in the city of New York during mid-20th-century America. And these people are like a character in a play or they are figures in a short story or a novel. ~ Gay Talese

When, late in the war, with the Wehrmacht breaking up on all fronts, our planes were sent to destroy this last major city, I doubt if the question was asked, "How will this tragedy benefit us, and how will that benefit compare with the ill-effects in the long run?" Dresden, a beautiful city, built in the art spirit, symbol of an admirable heritage, so anti-Nazi that Hitler visited it but twice during his whole reign, food and hospital center so bitterly needed now - plowed under and salt strewn in the furrows. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

To put a city in a book, to put the world on one sheet of paper
maps are the most condensed humanized spaces of all ... They make the landscape fit indoors, make us masters of sights we can't see and spaces we can't cover. ~ Robert Harbison

You asked a question about Martin Luther King.... All that stuff about "the dream" means nothing to the kids I know.... He died in vain. He was famous and he lived and gave his speeches and he died and now he's gone. But we're still here. Don't tell students in this school about "the dream." Go and look into a toilet here if you would like to know what life is like for students in this city.
-a student at East St. Louis High School, 1990 ~ Jennifer L. Hochschild