Jersey City Quotes

I believe the challenge the city faces is attracting continued development into the inner and western part of Jersey City. Nobody should be left behind as Jersey City continues to prosper and grow. ~ Vincent Frank

I lived in Red Hook, Brooklyn, for about 10 years, and then we moved out to Jersey City after my wife and I bought a house up in the Catskills. I miss Brooklyn, but the commute to the Catskills is about 45 minutes shorter. ~ Pablo Schreiber

In 1900, as the immigrants come down the gangplank into Jersey City, they expect the streets to be paved with gold, and they were only paved with gold in Frank Baum's 'The Wizard of Oz,' of course. ~ David Levering Lewis

Every nutritious sexual recipe calls for at least a pinch of love, and the fucks that rate four-star rankings from both gourmets and health-food nuts used cupfuls. Not that sex should be regarded as therapeutic or to be taken for medicinal purposes - only a dullard would hang such a millstone around the nibbled neck of a lay - but to approach sex carelessly, shallowly, with detachment and without warmth is to dine night after night in erotic greasy spoons. In time, one's palate will become insensitive, one will suffer (without knowing it) emotional malnutrition, the skin of the soul will fester with scurvy, the teeth of the heart will decay. Neither duration nor proclamation of commitment is necessarily the measure - there are ephemeral explosions of passion between strangers that make more erotic sense than many lengthy marriages, there are one-night stands in Jersey City more glorious than six-months affairs in Paris - but finally there is a commitment, however brief; a purity, however threatened; a vulnerability, however concealed; a generosity of spirit, however marbled with need; an honest caring, however singed by lust, that must be present if couplings are to be salubrious and not slow poison. ~ Tom Robbins

I do feel we can create more jobs and opportunities for Jersey City residents, but in the spirit of free enterprise, I do not think it is right to force companies to hire a fixed percentage of local residents. ~ Vincent Frank

My mother worked as a saleslady at the well-known Five Corner bakery in Journal Square during the day. Her orders were that I do at least one page of homework for every one of my subjects before she came home. It didn't matter what my teachers would assign, those were her rules and I didn't dare to violate them! However, I usually allowed others to make the rules and then decide whether I would follow them. Turning on our small Bakelite radio, I would ignore my mother's rules and listen to my favorite adventure shows.
"Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy, Superman, who could leap tall buildings in a single bound, and Tom Mix were my favorite daily half-hour radio programs during the week. Tom Mix was forever solving some mystery that I could help him with, since I had a decoder badge that cost only 10 cents, along with a box top from a Ralston Purina's "Wheat Chex" cereal box. Since it tasted like straw, wanting to get a decoder badge was the only way I would eat this blah cereal for breakfast.
The radio shows were way too exciting, and my homework always took second place. When my mother finally came home and saw that I had not done my work, she would get quite upset and make me do twice as much, seated at the kitchen table where she could keep her eye on me. Being under her direct supervision wasn't much fun, but I would sit there until she was satisfied that I had finished my assignments. My mother showed no mercy! If my father found out about my being lax, ther ~ Hank Bracker

It was actually a lot more helpful to have Calvin Hart, a cop, as my template. He was also my technical advisor on Shaft. This time, I kinda got to go to Jersey City with him, and hang around, and watch him interact with other cops, people in the projects, and see what it means to be him. People call him 'Big Daddy' and he's this larger-than-life hero to a lot of people. ~ Samuel L. Jackson

I went to Jersey City State College to please a family member. I wasn't prepared for school. To say I failed out is putting it nicely. ~ Derek Luke

They came out into the open, and it was the grimy backwaters of Jersey City now. Tall factory stacks, and fires burning, and spreads of stagnant stinking water.
On and on the ride went. On and on and on.
They turned north soon and left the big city and all its little satellites behind them, and after a while even the rusty glow on the horizon died down and was gone. Then trees began, and little lumpy hills, and there was nothing but the darkness and the night and the fear. ("The Number's Up") ~ Cornell Woolrich

Growing up in Jersey City was interesting. I got to learn a lot about different cultures: I had Hindu friends, Middle Eastern friends, black friends, Spanish friends. ~ Michelle Rodriguez

[On Los Angeles:] This city is a hundred years old but try and find some trace of its history. Every culture is swallowed up and spat out as a franchise. Taco Bell. Benihana of Tokyo. Numero Uno Pizza. Pup 'N' Taco. Kentucky Fried Chicken. Fast food sushi. Teriyaki Bowl. ~ Anne Finger

A dream my girlfriend and I have is to move to New York for a year or two because we just love the city. I would take some acting classes. ~ Daniel Bruhl

At such a time [at dawn] I would dream of being a baker who delivers bread, a fitter from the electric company, or an insurance man collecting the weekly installments. Or at least a chimney sweep. In the morning, at dawn, I would enter some half-opened gateway, still lighted by the watchman's lantern. I would put two fingers to my hat, crack a joke, and enter the labyrinth to leave late in the evening, at the other end of the city. I would spend all day going from apartment to apartment, conducting one never-ending conversation from one end of the city to the other, divided into parts among the householders; I would ask something in one apartment and receive a reply in another, make a joke in one place and collect the fruits of laughter in the third or fourth. Among the banging of doors I would squeeze through narrow passages, through bedrooms full of furniture, I would upset chamberpots, walk into squeaking perambulators in which babies cry, pick up rattles dropped by infants. I would stop for longer than necessary in kitchens and hallways, where servant girls were tidying up. The girls, busy, would stretch their young legs, tauten their high insteps, play with their cheap shining shoes, or clack around in loose slippers. ~ Bruno Schulz

We had heard that the people of Delhi loved their city as bees love flowers. But we could not believe that the child of a courtesan would prefer to live in a Delhi brothel rather than in our palace in Iran! ~ Khushwant Singh

almost unique in Eastern Europe in possessing its own constitution, called even now "the Magdeburg rights" and based upon medieval laws formulated in the city of Magdeburg? Was ~ William Styron

It is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or cheerful, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent. You can draw up a tremendous list of reasons why it should be insupportable. The fogs, the smoke, the dirt, the darkness, the wet, the distances, the ugliness, the brutal size of the place, the horrible numerosity of society, the manner in which this senseless bigness is fatal to amenity, to convenience, to conversation, to good manners – all this and much more you may expatiate upon. You may call it dreary, heavy, stupid, dull, inhuman, vulgar at heart and tiresome in form. [...] But these are occasional moods; and for one who takes it as I take it, London is on the whole the most possible form of life. [...] It is the biggest aggregation of human life – the most complete compendium of the world. ~ Henry James

It takes work to keep the world whole. A simple thing like a cup needs to be cleaned each day, placed carefully back on the shelf, not dropped. A city, in its own way, is every bit as delicate. People move over the causeways, ply the canals with their oars, go between their markets and their homes, buy and barter, swindle and sell, and all the while, mostly unknowingly, they are holding that city together. Each civil word is a stitch knitting it tight. Every law observed, willingly or grudgingly, helps to bind the whole. Every tradition, every social more, every act of neighborly goodwill is a stay against chaos. So many souls, so much effort, so difficult to create and so simple to shatter. ~ Brian Staveley

When Sarsine saw Kestrel, her eyes narrowed to mere cracks and Kestrel became very conscious that Sarsine was a tall woman. "For someone with a reputation for being so smart," Sarsine said, "you act like you haven't a thought in your head. Did it never occur to you that I'd worry when you disappeared from the city with no word?"
"I didn't exactly mean to leave."
"Oh, so it just happened."
"Yes."
"The gods made you do it."
Kestrel laughed. "Maybe they did." Then, earnestly, she said, "I'm sorry, Sarsine."
Sarsine folded her arms. "Then make it up to me."
"How?"
Sarsine's expression softened. Now there was an inquisitive gleam in her eye. "Start with the night you left. End with this very moment. And tell me everything."
So Kestrel did. ~ Marie Rutkoski

NO DIVINE BOVINE ! The clumsy creature currently inhabiting the White House is a distinctly dangerous animal. Part boneheaded raging bully, part dastardly coward showing signs of advanced stage mad cow disease. Neither of good pedigree nor useful breeding stock, there is essentially very little of substance between the T (bone) and the RUMP, except of course for an abundance of methane and bullshit. It's high time brave matadors for you to enter the bullring, with nimble step and fleet of foot. Take good aim and bring down this marauding beast once and for all. Slay public enemy number one and we will salute you forever. A louder cheer you will not hear from Madrid to Mexico City, from Beijing to Brussels, from London to Lahore, from Toronto to Tehran and ten thousand cities in between. ~ Alex Morritt

Remember the city, the city remember
Where treasure is hidden under the ground
The city, the city, always remember
That's where the treasure will be found. ~ Jeanne DuPrau

My theory is that Kurt had a lot of residual pain from his childhood. And when you pile that on top of his experience in World War II - he was in Dresden when it was bombed and saw a city annihilated. When you combine those two things, my impression of Kurt Vonnegut at 84 was that he was a very pained and haunted man. ~ Charles J. Shields

The army of the sea shall stand before the city, then shall go away for a passage that shall not be very long, as a great prey of citizens shall be holding the ground. The fleet returns. The great emblem recovered. ~ Nostradamus

All through the crowd were men in uniform, sailors from the great fleet anchored in the Hudson, soldiers with divisional insignia from Massachusetts to California, wanting fearfully to be noticed, and finding the great city thoroughly fed up with soldiers unless they were nicely massed into pretty formations and uncomfortable under the weight of a pack and rifle. Through this medley Dean and Gordon wandered; the former interested, made alert by the display of humanity at its frothiest and gaudiest; the latter reminded of how often he had been one of the crown, tired, casually fed, overworked, and dissipated. To Dean the struggle was significant, young, cheerful; to Gordon it was dismal, meaningless, endless. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

For years and years, even during the time of my first visit in 1962, it has been said that Calcutta was dying, that its port was silting up, its antiquated industry declining, but Calcutta hadn't died. It hadn't done much, but it had gone on; and it had begun to appear that the prophecy has been excessive. Now it occurred to me that perhaps this was what happened when cities died. They don't die with a bang; they didn't die only when they were abandoned. Perhaps, they died like this: when everybody was suffering, when transport was so hard that working people gave up jobs they needed because the fear the suffering of the travel; When no one had clean water or air; No one could go walking. Perhaps city died when they lost amenities that cities provided, the visual excitement, the heightened sense of human possibility, and became simply places where there were too many people, and people suffered. ~ V.S. Naipaul

Once there was a city of women. ~ Louise Carey

Conrad,Nabokov, Naipaul - these are writers known for having managed to migrate between languages, cultures, countries, continents, even civilizations. Their imaginations were fed by exile, a nourishment drawn not through roots but through rootlessness. My imagination however, requires that I stay in the same street, in the same house, gazing at the same view. Istanbul's fate is my fate. I am attached to this city because it has made me who I am. ~ Orhan Pamuk

Whitman himself "accepted" a great deal that his contemporaries found unmentionable. For he is not only writing of the prairie, he also wanders through the city and notes the shattered skull of the suicide, the "grey sick faces of onanists," etc., etc. But unquestionably our own age, at any rate in Western Europe, is less healthy and less hopeful than the age in which Whitman was writing. Unlike Whitman, we live in a shrinking world. The "democratic vistas" have ended in barbed wire. There is less feeling of creation and growth, less and less emphasis on the cradle, endlessly rocking, more and more emphasis on the teapot, endlessly stewing. To accept civilisation as it is practically means accepting decay. It has ceased to be a strenuous attitude and become a passive attitude - even "decadent," if that word means anything. ~ George Orwell

In every great city, with all its gleaming walls and massive libraries, with all the shimmering fountains and sculptured gardens, there is a superfluity of dung that must be carted out. ~ Jeff Wheeler

I come from a very small city in a rather remote part of America, where writers simply weren't part of the daily fabric. ~ Lynn Flewelling

And like all things, the problems disappeared. The challenges, goals and ambitions melted into folly and the reasons for all things homogenized into us and the enchantment of coffee-flavored kisses on a bright and promising morning became our religion, hope, destiny and dream. And it was beautiful then . . . . in a two room flat in the Alps of a city where love once lived. ~ David Ellsworth

The sports page told me that the New Jersey Niggers had beaten the Boston Micks. Some player on the Houston Hebes had accused the San Antonio Spics of dropping their last game to get a higher draft pick. The league was expanding to Toronto, and since they had already honored African Americans, Irish Americans, Jewish Americans, and Hispanic Americans, they wanted to name a team to honor Native Americans. They ~ MariJo Moore

Because the nights bring the threat of invasion and terror to the villages, thousands of children in northern Uganda have become night commuters, leaving the nightmare of capture behind for the safety of the city. ~ Sam Childers

There is a unique bond between the land and the people in the Crescent City. Everyone here came from somewhere else, the muddy brown current of life prying them loose from their homeland and sweeping them downstream, bumping and scraping, until they got caught by the horseshoe bend that is New Orleans. Not so much as a single pebble 'came' from New Orleans, any more than any of the people did. Every grain of sand, every rock, every drip of brown mud, and every single person walking, living and loving in the city is a refugee from somewhere else. But they made something unique, the people and the land, when they came together in that cohesive, magnetic, magical spot; this sediment of society made something that is not French, not Spanish, and incontrovertibly not American. ~ James Caskey

Nobody in the city of Los Angeles knows how to catch an alligator, ... We have no experience in recreation and parks, the zoo or animal control. ~ Janice Hahn

I should call myself four market Norton. I'm great in Boston and Cleveland. I do good in Phillie, New Jersey. ~ Jim Norton

Partly for this reason Sir Thomas Gresham had recently built the Royal Exchange, the most fabulous commercial building of its day. (Gresham is traditionally associated with Gresham's law - that bad money drives out good - which he may or may not actually have formulated.) Modeled on the Bourse in Antwerp, the Exchange contained 150 small shops, making it one of the world's first shopping malls, but its primary purpose and virtue was that for the first time it allowed City merchants - some four thousand of them - to conduct their business indoors out of the rain. We may marvel that they waited so long to escape the English weather, but there we are. ~ Bill Bryson

As time passed and Harry flew and flew and flew, he forgot all about the fog, the city below him, and just about everything. Nothing in the world seemed to matter but wings, and sky, and motion. The free and endless kind of motion that people are always looking for in a hundred different ways.

Flying was the way a swing swoops up; and the glide down a slide. It was the shoot of a sled downhill without the long climb back up. It was the very best throat-tightening thrills of skis, skates, surfboards and trampolines. Diving boards, merry-go-rounds, Ferris wheels, .roller coasters, skate boards and soap-box coasters. It was all of them, one after the other, all at once and a thousand times over. ~ Zilpha Keatley Snyder

They were on the edge of a desert now. Still - they had opened for business, had polished the glasses and wound the clocks and stirred the fires, and waited and waited to see who would come. There was no great flow of refugees from Dresden. The clocks ticked on, the fires crackled, the translucent candles dripped. And then there was a knock on the door, and in came four guards and one hundred American prisoners of war. The innkeeper asked the guards if they had come from the city. Yes. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

I only box. It's the only thing that keeps me sane. I can't just go to the gym and run. I'd rather die. I played volleyball and rode horses my entire life, so just, like, moving to a city and having to go the gym was just, like, so weird for me. ~ Gigi Hadid

Alderic, Knight of the Order of the City and the Assault, hereditary Guardian of the King's Peace of Mind, a man not unremembered among the makers of myth, pondered so long upon the Gibbelins' hoard that by now he deemed it his. Alas that I should say of so perilous a venture, undertaken at dead of night by a valorous man, that its motive was sheer avarice! Yet upon avarice only the Gibbelins relied to keep their larders full, and once in every hundred years sent spies into the cities of men to see how avarice did, and always the spies returned again to the tower saying that all was well.
It may be thought that, as the years went on and men came by fearful ends on that tower's wall, fewer and fewer would come to the Gibbelins' table: but the Gibbelins found otherwise.
("The Hoard Of The Gibbelins") ~ Lord Dunsany

I think anyone who knows me at all knows that I have been a movie addict all my life. I grew up in a city obsessed by cinema and where there are cinemas on every street corner. ~ Salman Rushdie

I actually like south Florida. I never lived in a more interesting place than this. I've never met a wider range of people. I guess when I came here I thought there were Cubans and then there were people from New York and that was Miami. Now I know that it's Cubans, people from New York, and some people from New Jersey. ~ Dave Barry

I used to be such a militant city-ist, but more and more I've seen forests and nature and oceans, and I don't know any more if this is the awesomest way to live. ~ Regina Spektor

In Sweeden every city looks the same. I've been to sixteen cities, and every single city is the same! The same cobblestone, the same McDonalds, the same everything. Everything was designed by the same guy. They must have saved a lot of money when they designed all the cities. ~ Pablo Francisco

To take possession of a city of which you are not a native you must first fall in love there. ~ John Banville

No, you started this shit. I don't know how they do it in Rhode Island, but here in Jersey, bitches get stitches for talking shit and fucking with something they shouldn't. ~ L.D. Davis

I was also thinking that I only had a certain amount of time to make music and to spend it in that city. And everybody else ... you know the story 'Oh, New York it's such a great place, but it's so expensive to live here and there's so much to do.' You go there for inspiration and you end up getting a job to pay bills. I thought I must fight that at all costs. ~ Roy Montgomery

My mother's parents, Bernard and Rivka Levine, were from Russia and also immigrated to New York City. My mother, Rose, was the elder of their two daughters. My maternal grandmother's family included several scholars and professionals. ~ Robert Lefkowitz

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

When I was a little kid, all I wanted to do was to escape what I thought was the country and get to a city. Probably film and television had influenced me so much, I really thought the key to happiness was living a very artificial life in a penthouse in New York with martini glasses. ~ Tom Ford

If there is one word to describe Atlantic City, it's Big Business -- Or two words Big Business." -- ("President"(!)) Donald Trump ~ Leland Gregory

Everyone should die with someone holding on to them ~ Cassandra Clare

Why would you be my friend? What do you get out of it?"
I consider that question as I sip from the bottle of rum, sitting back down in my chair. "The truth?"
"Please."
"I'm bored," I admit. "I came to the city because of a movie, too. The Godfather. But reality? It's nothing like it is in the movies. Most days we just sit around, waiting for something to happen. It's monotonous. The world, it's all in black and white, but you? You're so many shades of red, woman, and color me curious, but I find myself not so bored with your bullshit around. ~ J.M. Darhower

graduated from Parsons The New School for Design and illustrates a wide range of projects. She grew up in New York City and lives in Florida. Learn more ~ Sarah O'Leary Burningham