Smurfing Urban Quotes

The auto industry must acknowledge that a rational transportation policy should seek a balance between individual convenience, the efficient use of limited resources, and urban-living values that protect spaciousness, natural beauty, and human-scale mobility. ~ Stewart Udall

Being a laborer with one hand is about as useful as being a sperm donor with one nut. ~ Devon McCormack

A steampunk nation
Baby pollution rises up then the loving comes arraigning 'cause
Our art's official and only partially artificial
And our heart's in the middle of sharp hardened shards of metal but
There's not where it settles
Because it's beating to the steaming of God's hottest pot or kettle
And now we face it, this creation we made to
To save our craving for a synthetic rebelnation it's
Our safeway they make into a pathetic revelation
In our steampunk nation
Our steampunk nation ~ Criss Jami

I've never looked at a suburban building as being a minor building and an urban building as being a major building. ~ Helmut Jahn

Claudia Rankine's Citizen comes at you like doom. It's the best note in the wrong song that is America. Its various realities-'mistaken' identity, social racism, the whole fabric of urban and suburban life-are almost too much to bear, but you bear them, because it's the truth. Citizen is Rankine's Spoon River Anthology, an epic as large and frightening and beautiful as the country and various emotional states that produced it. ~ Hilton Als

She said, "Thank God. The spell didn't recognize you as an enemy."
He gave in to his impulse at last and cupped her chin, stepping close so that he could feel the heat from her body. It was a subtle warmth that touched him in places he didn't understand and had long denied existed. "That's because I'm not your enemy, Sophie. ~ Thea Harrison

There are details about your life I really do not want to know about. You told me he taught you how to fight with weapons, but I guess I never ... "
"Put two and two together?" Katie grinned. "That's not like you, detective Jules."
"I know. I guess I overlooked the gory details. Blood and guts have never been my forte. I like action. Give me Mission Impossible and CSI, but leave out the gruesome details."
They stopped upon reaching the entrance to the barn. "Roller skating disco lover turns FBI crime scene investigator. I think there's a book waiting to be written for you. ~ Mary Abshire

The same is true of stories and legends that haunt urban space like superfluous or additional inhabitants. They are the object of a witch-hunt, by the very logic of the techno-structure. But [the extermination of proper place names] (like the extermination of trees, forests, and hidden places in which such legends live) makes the city a 'suspended symbolic order.' The habitable city is thereby annulled. Thus, as a woman from Rouen put it, no, here 'there isn't any place special, except for my own home, that's all ... There isn't anything.' Nothing 'special': nothing that is marked, opened up by a memory or a story, signed by something or someone else. Only the cave of the home remains believable, still open for a certain time to legends, still full of shadows. Except for that, according to another city-dweller, there are only 'places in which one can no longer believe in anything. ~ Michel De Certeau

I found 'Bordertown' when I was standing on the border between childhood and my teens, and it carried me past that transition. In the process, it helped to create the next step of its own evolution: the modern urban fantasy owes a lot more to 'Bordertown' than many people will ever know. ~ Seanan McGuire

He needed no one.
For to trust was to be betrayed. ~ Donna Grant

I lived in New York City back in the 1980s, which is when the Bordertown series was created. New York was a different place then -- dirtier, edgier, more dangerous, but also in some ways more exciting. The downtown music scene was exploding -- punk and folk music were everywhere -- and it wasn't as expensive to live there then, so a lot of young artists, musicians, writers, etc. etc. were all living and doing crazy things in scruffy neighborhoods like the East Village.

I was a Fantasy Editor for a publishing company back then -- but in those days, "fantasy" to most people meant "imaginary world" books, like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. A number of the younger writers in the field, however, wanted to create a branch of fantasy that was rooted in contemporary, urban North America, rather than medieval or pastoral Europe. I'd already been working with some of these folks (Charles de Lint, Emma Bull, etc.), who were writing novels that would become the foundations for the current Urban Fantasy field. At the time, these kinds of stories were considered so strange and different, it was actually hard to get them into print.

When I was asked by a publishing company to create a shared-world anthology for Young Adult readers, I wanted to create an Urban Fantasy setting that was something like a magical version of New York...but I didn't want it to actually be New York. I want it to be any city and every city -- a place that anyone from anywhere could go to or rela ~ Terri Windling

Good things are worth waiting for. ~ Katie Reus

He didn't get it. That's exactly why I needed my Maker's Mark. You can't throw my life into turmoil, and then screw me out of my bourbon too. ~ Donna Augustine

I watched him fall in love with you in that very instant."
"Shut up." I laughed. "You can't fall in love in one glance."
"Wanna bet? ~ Amanda Carlson

I lifted my head, my gaze meeting his. "Wanting something doesn't guarantee you will get it."
"A man can still hope."
"I've never had much room for hope. ~ Elizabeth Morgan

But if you cross me again Akil, so-help-me, I'll find a way to kill you this time."
His eyes lit up at the prospect, as though he'd accepted a challenge I didn't even know I'd laid down. "I'd expect nothing less."
Demons; only they can get a cheap thrill from a death threat. ~ Pippa DaCosta

You're just a big softy," he taunted. "The last person said that to me got Viagra in his coffee next morning," Ty warned seriously. ~ Madeleine Urban

Tangled Moon ~ Sometimes you have to break the rules. Sometimes you have to let go of the past. And sometimes you have to accept the impossible. ~ Olivia Stocum

This in no way means I don't still hate you, he muttered as he nuzzled his nose and mouth against Zane's temple and closed his eyes. ~ Madeleine Urban

He looked at me and smiled. I was thinking he would fit in perfectly at any college campus across the country. Instead, he ran a Godforsaken library, offering lost souls in a lost desert whatever pleasure the world's scribblers might provide. I said goodbye and left the library. ~ David Grant Urban

This is why you don't call the police. Or Preternatural Control. No matter what. Ever. If I'd doubted that rule
and I was fairly sure I never had
I certainly never would have again. My skin itched just talking to the authorities ... The police department had more than a few open cases with my name on them
figuratively, and I had no desire to make that literal [where they connected me to] the vigilante responsible for dozens of area beastie slayings ... ~ Jennifer Lynn Barnes

If you read only one memoir by a disaffected, urban, 20-something Jewish girl this year, make it this one. Shukert rocks the lulav. ~ Gary Shteyngart

... the door banged wide open, and the most striking man I had ever seen stood in the frame, the black winds whipping around him like a chariot of storm clouds. ~ Heather Heffner

Cities originally surrounded by a wall can produce an urban population cut off from the surrounding fields and from agriculture altogether. At the same time, the greenbelt laws eliminate the possibility of the unchecked expansion of a city into a monstrous megalopolis. If there is a need for additional homes, a new city must be established. ~ Yehuda Levi

These were strange, freakish, and dangerous creatures, the likes of which might well have brought Darwin himself to despair with their obvious lack of conformity to the laws of evolutionary development. As much as these beasts might differ from the animals humans were used to, and whether they had been reborn under the invisible and ruinous rays of sunlight, turned from inoffensive representatives of urban fauna into the spawn of hell, or whether they had always dwelled in the depths, only now to be disturbed by man – still, they were an evident part of life on earth. ~ Dmitry Glukhovsky

Like Free People, the Urban brand is planning to grow by expanding product assortments, expanding the brand reach and by improved marketing. ~ Richard Hayne

So much for a great opening speech, that sucker done tucked tail and is hiding in the deepest part of my brain, sucking its thumb. ~ Brandy Nacole

She glanced again toward Vincent. "And who is he again?"
Vincent grinned. "I'm Vincent Blackman of the SpiderSly Company. Mirren and I are going to sleep together; we just have to get through this bullshit of her father's first. ~ Erin Kellison

One day you're a college graduate, in love with Mr. Right and looking for a job. The next day, your Rambo."
"Your timeline is off. And can we lose the Rambo part? ~ Mary Abshire

the data we see in this chapter shows racism isn't a problem of outliers. It is pervasive. We've seen the same patterns repeated on three different sites, with different users and different experiences: men, women, free, subscription-only, casual, serious, "urban" demographics, and more "mainstream." All told, the research set represents a large chunk of the young adults in this country, and the data uniformly shows non-blacks discount African American profiles. It's not a problem caused by a small cluster of "ugly" black users or by a small group of unreformed racists throwing off an otherwise regular pattern. ~ Christian Rudder

There is no logic that can be superimposed on the city; people make it, and it is to them, not buildings, that we must fit our plans. ~ Jane Jacobs

[T]he final step in becoming an urban farmer is the naming of your farm, even if your name is simply for the few pots on your front porch. Creating your name helps to build a sense of place within your neighborhood as well as pride in your accomplishments. By naming your farm you give it a life of its own. Be creative and come up with a name that inspires and makes people smile, like my friend Laura's "Wish We Had Acres," the Fairy Tale inspired "Jack's Bean Stalk" or my "Urban Farm. ~ Greg Peterson

Always have a plan, but be prepared to change it at any given moment. ~ K. Chrisbacher

What's more powerful than a priestess?" I didn't really want to know, did I?
"A bokor."
The name rang a few tiny bells inside my head, but not enough to put it together on my own. "Explain."
"In a nutshell, they're the equivalent of a sorceress, and they deal primarily with the dead. ~ Amanda Carlson

Games of chance fell outside the boundaries of urban reformers' definitions of respectable labor and amusement ~ LaShawn Harris

Knocking on doors wasn't working. We had to try something else. Remember the kids whose natural curiosity brought them into our little office on the corner? We set up a Freedom School that was fashioned after the SNCC Freedom Schools in Mississippi and other places. ~ Junius Williams

The city reveals itself as a set of cells, a hundred thousand windows, some darkened and some flooded with green or white or golden light. Inside, strangers swim to and fro, attending to the business of their private hours. You can see them, but you can't reach them, and so this commonplace urban phenomenon, available in any city of the world on any night, conveys to even the most social a tremor of loneliness, its uneasy combination of separation and exposure. ~ Olivia Laing

This dudes nuttier than squirrel shit.
-Ty Henderson ~ Madeleine Urban

I swore I wasn't going to rescue any more damsels in distress," Day muttered.
To his surprise, Barbara gave him a lopsided grin, banging on the side of the trailer to make it produce a door. "What makes you think she isn't rescuing you?" she asked, and stomped inside without a backward look. ~ Deborah Blake

This diversity of social and semi-governmental institutions and organizations gives us not merely an insight into the immense complexity of an urban society, but also an inkling of the huge efforts and even violence required if they are to be disciplined, levelled down and made uniform. We come to realize all the things that must be done to ensure that the hundreds of newspapers and magazines follow the same linguistic line, the theatre repertoires are made to conform, and the libraries and bookshops are purged of the works of writers who have not kept up with the times. What must happen to ensure that museums, whose exhibitions and displays necessarily reflect long-term efforts, accept the inevitability of a new line and a new course? And what must be done to ensure that hundreds of schools and hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren feel ready to accept a new canon ~ Karl Schlogel