Keys To The City Quotes

Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks. ~ Doug Larson

It was Eric's voice not Simon's, on the recorded message. "Ladies, ladies " he said. Though it was the millionth time she'd heard the recording, Clary couldn't help rolling her eyes. "If you've reached this message that means our boy Simon is out partying. But please don't fight among yourselves. There's always enough Simon to go around." There was a muffled yell, some laughter, and then the long sound of the beep. ~ Cassandra Clare

I've seen a lot of things," said one bearded old fellow, "but nothing ever got me like the big trees out in the West. Whey some of them shoot up tall as the tallest building, and they're a heap sight more beautiful. When you are standin' there in amongst 'em, you get to feelin' mighty small. Not measly small like here in the city. It's a good feelin'. And there's a great quietness about 'em. Like as if those giant trees have been standin' there for thousands of years just storin' up quiet. But you've got to see 'em to understand what I mean. ~ Bill Peet

Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy: Do not block the way of inquiry. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

Then he thought of Marland just now, on the edge of the hill, how the newborn sun flamed over her shoulder, having burned through the fog of the night; how the tops of the trees were beneath her feet and the city of Crescent was small enough to fit in the palm of her hand. Her face could change like the sky itself and like the sky never lost its radiance and beauty. Sierra Marland was a facade with no end and yet she had been as genuine and true to him as the heavens were blue. ~ Luke Taylor

Once I could drive, I spent all my time in the city going to metal shows. I missed the first couple of Metallica shows because I was lame. By the time I got into them, they were playing places like the Kabuki. ~ Brian Posehn

I've done the big 12-city tours, and I'm never going to do that again - never. I was younger then. It wears you out, you know. ~ Ruth Rendell

Wilderness is not only a haven for native plants and animals but it is also a refuge from society. Its a place to go to hear the wind and little else, see the stars and the galaxies, smell the pine trees, feel the cold water, touch the sky and the ground at the same time, listen to coyotes, eat the fresh snow, walk across the desert sands, and realize why its good to go outside of the city and the suburbs. Fortunately, there is wilderness just outside the limits of the cities and the suburbs in most of the United States, especially in the West. ~ John Muir

Somepeople drink to foregt, I smoke to remember Anna Madrigal in Tales of the City ... ~ Armistead Maupin

Budapest in late May is a city of lilacs. The sweet, languid, rather sleepy smell of lilacs wafts everywhere. And it is a city of lovers, many of them quite middle-aged. Walking with their arms around each other, embracing and kissing on park benches. A sensuousness very much bound up (it seems to me) with the heady ubiquitous smell of lilacs. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

A large number of people had already gathered in the city centre to demonstrate against the government. Seemingly it had occurred to no-one to opt for the most obvious solution – stormtroopers. ~ Timur Vermes

Filip was from San Jose, but his painfully good looks excused that. He was tall, six-foot-something-or-other, intensely blue eyes, chiseled features, massive package. Didn't have Prince Albert in a Can, but he did have a thick gauged one through his cock head. His name really wasn't Filip, it was Brent, an all-American moniker about as dark and mysterious as pastel-colored bobby socks. Initially, I joked about his choice of sobriquet, changing his name to go off to the big city, transform into Mr. Big Stuff, until it dawned on me I'd done the same damn thing with my 'Catalyst' surname. So I shut up.

He comported himself with rigid shoulders and stiff gestures, as if he had a secret. Turns out he did. Filip was married, had a wife for more than a year now, but they had some kind of crazy arrangement. Days they were a couple; evenings they were free to do as they pleased. Where'd they come up with that idea, Jerry Springer?



"If you wanted to go back to your place, we could," Filip suggested. "But only until dawn." Yeah, right. An affair is an affair, the way I see it. What difference is there between 5 and 7 a.m.? Was their marriage some sort of religious fasting thing, starve until the sun sets then binge and party down? I'd never sunk my teeth into married meat, but figured it was a logical progression from my I'm Not Gay But It's Different With You saga. And if I was going to sin, I was gonna sin good. That means no peeking to see whether it's still d ~ Clint Catalyst

Each of us is free to move our consciousness through that infinite pattern of possibilities as we please. If we're filled with fears, or if we trust the fears of others, we'll choose a path in which our city falls into the sea, or a path in which a third world war vaporizes us, or whatever other disaster is most thrilling or horrifying or fascinating for us. ~ Richard Bach

Blood City III: The Massacre. I'd read the summary of it online, and frankly, it sounded like the directors had just decided to film my life. ~ James Patterson

Of course, if Saint Peter could come out today upon these streets below he would find all he could wish, voices from nowhere, music from unpopulated boxes, men ascending divine distances in gas balloons, and traveling at the speed of sound, apparitions from nowhere appear on the screen; the sick are raised from the dead, life is prolonged so that every detail of pain may be relished, the blind are given eyes and the cripples forced to walk, and there is an item which can blow a city of the beloved enemy into a place where their sins will be brought home to them, with of course as much noise as the trumpets on the walls of Jericho ~ William Gaddis

In conformity with these designs on the city of Washington, and notwithstanding the disastrous results of the invasion of 1862, it was determined by the Rebel government last summer to resume the offensive in that direction. ~ Edward Everett

Last call for second thoughts,' murmured June. 'Or second call for last ones.'
Rain drummed on the roof of the town car as it pulled up outside the old Old Courthouse.
'Don't be somber,' said Marcella. 'It's a party.'
'It's madness,' countered June.
Marcella's lips twitched. 'Good thing there's method in it.'
It was a gamble, of coarse. A risk. An ambitious play.
But she used to tell Marcus, the world wasn't made for the faint of heart.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
And if Marcella's plan went up in flames, well, she'd take the whole damn city with her. ~ V.E. Schwab

Look, I really appreciate your helping with the med-droids, and I'm sure the best mechanic in the city has a million jobs to prioritize, but at the risk of sounding like a spoiled prince, could I ask that you move Nainsi to the top of your list? ~ Marissa Meyer

12. If we do not wish to fight, we can prevent the enemy from engaging us even though the lines of our encampment be merely traced out on the ground. All we need do is to throw something odd and unaccountable in his way. [This extremely concise expression is intelligibly paraphrased by Chia Lin: "even though we have constructed neither wall nor ditch." Li Ch'uan says: "we puzzle him by strange and unusual dispositions;" and Tu Mu finally clinches the meaning by three illustrative anecdotes - one of Chu-ko Liang, who when occupying Yang-p'ing and about to be attacked by Ssu-ma I, suddenly struck his colors, stopped the beating of the drums, and flung open the city gates, showing only a few men engaged in sweeping and sprinkling the ground. This unexpected proceeding had the intended effect; for Ssu-ma I, suspecting an ambush, actually drew off his army and retreated. What Sun Tzu is advocating here, therefore, is nothing more nor less than the timely use of "bluff."] ~ Sun Tzu

I try to jog in every city I visit, and I particularly enjoy harbour-front paths that let me ogle big ships, railroad bridges and the ruins of factories and warehouses. ~ Steven Pinker

I have actually programmed a fair bit in Perl, like I have C++ code published with my name on it. Other things I have tried and have no intention to do again if I can at all avoid it include smoking, getting drunk enough to puke and waste the whole next day with hang-over, breaking a leg in a violent car crash, getting mugged in New York City, or travel with Aeroflot. ~ Erik Naggum

I was afraid of Korean food when I moved to L.A., let alone sushi. I remember thinking either sink or swim. Living here in Studio City, Ventura Blvd. is the Mecca of sushi restaurants. What you thought was so exotic is just run of the mill. ~ Parvesh Cheena

I'd been here before. Not to this Freedman Town, but to plenty of others. I've been all over the North, and every northern city has a Freedman Town. New York City's got a few, and Chicago's got more than a few. Baltimore, Washington. The manumitted have got to go somewhere, and the world doesn't give them a lot of options. The details are different - some of 'em are built on a high-rise model, bent towers clustered around courtyards, crammed to the gills with the poorest of the poor, living hard, the forgotten children of forgotten children. Some are like this one, blocks and blocks of small ramshackle homes, no sidewalks along narrow roads with the concrete worn and blasted through, the yards between the houses as weed-choked as vacant lots. Ivy growing in wild overlapping networks, engulfing the lower stories and sending menacing tendrils into upstairs windows. Gutters dangling or cracked, porches falling. ~ Ben H. Winters

What makes a good family? Well, I suppose obviously love. Love lubricated often I think by humor. I think a family that can laugh at each other and tease themselves and who are able to be jolly with each other I think is the key. ~ Stephen Fry

Nevertheless, it bothered Vimes, even though he'd got really good at the noises and would go up against any man in his rendition of the HRUUUGH! But is this a book for a city kid? When would he ever hear these noises? In the city, the only sound those animals would make was "sizzle." But the nursery was full of the conspiracy with bah-lambs and teddy bears and fluffy ducklings everywhere he looked.
One evening, after a trying day, he'd tried the Vimes street version:
Where's my daddy?
Is that my daddy?
He goes "Bugrit! Millennium hand and shrimp!"
He is Foul Ol' Ron!
No, that's not my daddy!
It had been going really well when Vimes heard a meaningful little cough from the doorway, wherein stood Sybil. Next day, Young Sam, with a child's unerring instinct for this sort of thing, said "Buglit!" to Purity. And that, although Sybil never raised the subject even when they were alone, was that. From then on Sam stuck rigidly to the authorized version. ~ Terry Pratchett

Unavoidable circumstances prevent me from giving you ample written instructions. Such however as may be deemed necessary will be prepared and sent to you at the City of Washington in a very few days. ~ Anson Jones

You could walk from North Tai Ping Zhuang over to the North Entrance of He Ping Street, and you may as well have smoked your way through two packs of Camels. You smoked the taxi driver's smoke as he spun sharply around a corner, you smoked the local party leader's smoke as he tried to establish order at a meeting, you smoked your boyfriend's smoke whether he loved you or not. Chinese-made cigarettes, foreign imports, dodgy rip-offs. The city was in a permanent fog. ~ Xiaolu Guo

If a city is designed in a way that makes a long drive to work necessary, we harm the social health of that city. If a lot of people cycle, it's probably an indication that you live in a healthy neighborhood. This is something that should be seriously considered in urban planning, if you want to ensure a neighborhood togetherness and trust among locals. ~ Meik Wiking

A newcomer to a city should first look for a suitable room for resting at night. After securing the room and keeping the luggage there, he or she may go out for sightseeing. Otherwise it'll be a lot of suffering to find a place to rest in the darkness of the night. Similarly, upon securing the eternal resting place in Self, one can freely roam around doing his or her daily works. ~ Abhijit Naskar

And it is awful here, there is no other way to say it. But I believe that Detroit is America's city. It was the vanguard of our way up, just as it is the vanguard of our way down. And one hopes the vanguard of our way up again. Detroit is Pax Americana ... America's way of life was built here. ~ Charlie LeDuff

Never mind gas masks and fallout shelters in the event of biological warfare. Many New Yorkers move from place to place equipped with the essentials of vermin assault weaponry: mouse traps, roach spray, and sticky tapes. In some neighborhoods, it's a must. ~ Isabel Lopez

Thousands of Mexicans gathered in Mexico City to protest high food prices. The protest only lasted an hour, because everyone had to leave for their jobs in Los Angeles ~ Conan O'Brien

I keep going because I doubt myself. It drives me to be better. I've learned that the mastery of self-doubt is the key to success. It's like being animated by the love of a woman - the need to be worthy of her. ~ Will Smith

You said to imagine a great big sphere, and inside is all of time and space. All of it. And outside are these intelligent entities, and all they are is curious; all they want to do is experience."
"Go on," Alice said. Her eyes are so bright.…
"One might say: 'I want the experience of being a seventeen-year-old girl in the fourteenth century who was burned at the stake.' Or 'I'd like the experience of being a four-month aborted fetus in 1994.' And they just dive in and do it." I looked at Alice. She was waiting for something. I thought about what I just said, and then I remembered: "They have to create what happens. Write a script." She still waited, so I said, "Not only the experience itself; the house, the city, the country, the whole world where it happens. All of it."
"Which makes that entity responsible for all of it," she reminded me.
"So that's who the 'little man watching' really is - that, that thing - "
"Not a thing," she said, interrupting for the very first time. "It's you. You're living a script that you wrote. Which is why free will and predestination are the same thing. ~ Theodore Sturgeon

Victoria Park looks like every other inner-city park in every other city in Canada; a large and handsome memorial to the war dead surrounded by a square block of hard-tracked grass and benches where people can sit and look at statues of politicians or at flower beds planted with petunias and marigolds, the cheap and the hardy, downtown survivors. ~ Gail Bowen

The explosion would be just the right size to maximize the amount of paperwork your lab would face. If the explosion were smaller, you could potentially cover it up. If it were larger, there would be no one left in the city to submit paperwork to. ~ Randall Munroe

It was as if my sould had left my body, floated up to the ceiling, and was watching me destroy my own career with one deliberately assaultive punch. (Dark City Lights) ~ Peter Hochstein

So I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them: Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning. ~ Carl Sandburg

I saw the Emperor – this world-soul – riding out of the city on reconnaissance. It is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrated here at a single point, astride a horse, reaches out over the world and masters it. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

The Lawyers' trade is a trade built entirely on words. And so long as the lawyers carefully keep to themselves the key to what those words mean, the only way the average man can find out what is going on is to become a lawyer, or at least to study law, himself. All of which makes it very nice
and very secure
for the lawyers. ~ Fred Rodell

Developing emotional intelligence is one way to protect yourself from damaging relationships. Emotional intelligence is a science that has been studied and researched for over a decade. According to the theories, mutual respect and effective communication are key. ~ Liz Miller