Street Smart Quotes

You leave your neighborhood but you never want to forget where you came from," he says. "I have the best of best worlds. I'm street smart and book smart. You put that together in an African-American male and that's dangerous. ~ Anonymous

For a woman to be able to dominate and also be feminine and soft, that's a talent. And its not all about appearance. A woman who has a brain, who is street-smart and book-smart, that woman is very, very sexy to me. ~ Usher

I was miserable in West Side Story. They really miscast me. I came from the Midwest; what they really needed was a guy that was street smart. The first time I saw the movie, I had to walk out. I looked like the biggest fruit that ever walked on to film. My character was so weak. ~ Richard Beymer

I'm street smart. You can't con me. But that's just from living in New York. Now if a guy came from Mississippi somewhere, Ohio somewhere, to New York City for the first time, he don't have the street smarts. You can take him. ~ J. B. Smoove

Being the first mid-size SUV for the brand, Dodge Nitro had to personify the bold, powerful and street-smart attitude of Dodge. In a world of mostly bland SUVs, the 2007 Dodge Nitro has the design, engineering and performance to inspire consumers and ignite the mid-size SUV market. ~ George Murphy

How could I admit that the All-American Girl's force field of stoicism and self-reliance and do-unto-others-and-keep-smiling wasn't working, wasn't keeping pain and shame and powerlessness away?

From a young age I had learned to get over - to cover my tracks emotionally, to hide or ignore my problems in the belief that they were mine alone to solve. So when exhilarating transgressions required getting over on authority figures, I knew how to do it. I was a great bluffer. And when common, everyday survival in prison required getting over, I could do that too. This is what was approvingly described by my fellow prisoners as 'street-smarts,' as in 'You wouldn't think it to look at her, but Piper's got street-smarts. ~ Piper Kerman

the most important street smart in a city of strangers is simply good manners. ~ Eugene Salomon

They say somebody's 'street smart.' I feel like, if I got intelligence, it's just a country smart. ~ Dolly Parton

Some people are street-smart, some people are book-smart, but most people are just dumber than dirt. ~ Lois Greiman

I'm a real dumb-dumb in real life. I'm just book smart. But definitely not street smart. The other day I lost my jacket in a cab. And I'll forget things every time I leave the house. ~ Masi Oka

These days, it's better to look poor and be safe, than look rich and be a victim. ~ Anthony Liccione

We can't all be Einstein (because we don't all play the violin). At the very least, we need a sort of street-smart science: the ability to recognize evidence, gather it, assess it, and act on it. ~ Judith Stone

But the kid could think, too. He wasn't academic like Joe, but he was practical. His IQ was probably about the same, but it was a get-the-job-done type of street smart IQ, not any kind of for-the-sake-of-it cerebral indulgence. Reacher liked facts, for sure, and information too, but not theory. He was a real-world character. Stan had no idea what the future held for the guy. No idea at all, except he was going to be too big to fit inside a tank or an airplane cockpit. So it was going to have to be something else. ~ Lee Child

I was street smart, but unfortunately the street was Rodeo Drive. ~ Carrie Fisher

Silence was my sister's weapon. When people hurt or angered her, she never got loud like Mom or mean and smart-ass like me. Silence was how she fought back. It wasn't passive, or an act of helplessness: it was a cold cruel withering blade, lasting far longer than my mother's rage or my own antagonism, strong enough to make us practically beg for forgiveness every time.

Except now her weapon had gone haywire, turned on herself, driven her from her home and her support system and into what-knew-what kind of danger. ~ Sam J. Miller

When I was placed upon the block," Hughes remembered, "a Mr. McGee came up and felt of me and asked me what I could do. 'You look like a right smart nigger,' said he, 'Virginia always produces good darkies.'" In fact, more than two-thirds of the people transported to New Orleans between July 1829 and the end of 1831 came from the three states of North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland. The combined share for North Carolina and the Chesapeake - the oldest ~ Edward E. Baptist

Main Street, which they were on, was a pretty street, even at night, and it looked old-fashioned in the best sense of the word - as if, for a hundred years, people had been caring for that street and they had not been in a hurry to lose anything they liked. ~ Neil Gaiman

I stopped noticing the nit-picky things years ago, My late husband was brilliant, but never figured out dirty cups went in the sink. Used to drive me crazy, but one day I compared it to his good qualities. Supportive husband, hands-on dad. Smart, funny, awesome popcorn-maker. All that versus doesn't put cups in the sink. The latter just wasn't worth mentioning. ~ Donna Gentry Morton

And besides, can't I do it the way I always used to as a child in matters that were dangerous? I don't even need to go to the country myself, it isn't necessary. I'll send my clothed body. If it staggers out of the door of my room, the staggering will indicate not fear but its nothingness. Nor is it excitement if it stumbles on the stairs, if it travels in the country, sobbing as it goes, and there eats its supper in tears. For I myself am meanwhile lying in my bed, smoothly covered over with the yellow-brown blanket, exposed to the breeze that is wafted through the seldom-aired room. The carriages and people in the street move and walk hesitantly on shining ground, for I am still dreaming. ~ Franz Kafka

Oh, this was getting better and better. Beau was making a valiant effort to remain stoic, but his face betrayed the long-suffering look of someone who had to listen to something patently idiotic.
"What happened next?" an older female voice asked.
"We got up to leave, and the girl wanted to come with us, and the first black guy, he, like, got up and he was all, 'You're not leaving!' and we were all like, 'Yes we are,' and then I threw some chicken at them so they'd know we meant business, and the white kid who was with them, he picked up Chad and threw him through the window."
Drunk knights in shining armor, protecting the hapless female from the clutches of scary black guys. Give me a break.
"Then what happened?" the older female asked.
"Then they left and went up the street. And Chad was like, 'We can't let them get away with this shit,' so we followed them. And I said, 'Hey! What do you think you're doing with that throwing people through windows and shit.' And the white guy said, 'You must like going through windows.' And I told him 'Fuck you' in a polite voice and he threw me through the window."
Beau clicked the recorder off.
"It's good that he used his polite voice," I said. "Otherwise no telling what would've happened. ~ Ilona Andrews

I felt there was a lot I needed to teach her. I wanted to give her an early grounding in the basics of arithmetic and reading, but even more important, I wanted to get across the idea that the world was a dangerous place and life was unpredictable and you had to be smart, focused, and determined to make it through. You had to be willing to work hard and persevere in the face of misfortune. A lot of people, even those born with brains and beauty, didn't have what it took to knuckle down and get the thing done. ~ Jeannette Walls

Cold rain, the sidewalk shining, the shhh of car tires on the wet street. Thinking about the terrible gulf of years between eighteen and fifty. ~ Emily St. John Mandel

I'm timeless, I got that Dickensian, London street-urchin look in high school. I'll never be in style, but I'll always be different. ~ Stevie Nicks

Who could sit upon anything in Fleet-street during the busy hours of the day, and not be dazed and deafened by two immense processions, one ever tending westward with the sun, the other ever tending eastward from the sun, both ever tending to the plains beyond the range of red and purple where the sun goes down! ~ Charles Dickens

Wandering down the street in an aimless sort of way, cold too, in a dress from last night that made young men stop and stare in the street, Charity Hill found herself hating the single life for the very first time. ~ Elizabeth Jane Howard

I have ceased to care about anything. I have no personal ambition, or even the desire that people call me nice, or pretty, or witty. Nor do I have any use for sensation, nor do I care. Cessation. It is a technical circle, encircling, cycle, of giving the body to be burned, but having no charity.
... What can I do? For without love I am truly dead. ~ Elizabeth Smart

I don't need the money
I couldn't care
'Cause everything I want Is standing right here
I would live on the street
In a cardboard shack
Just to worship your feet
And the curve of your back ~ DeVotchKa

Right around the time he hits his middle forties, a man starts giving serious thought to dying well. In his sleep, in his own bed, or in the course of a street fight meant to settle something meaningful. His end doesn't have to be poignant, just devoid of dignity. You wouldn't think that would be too much to ask.

But how a man leaves this world, much like the way he comes into it, is almost never his own call to make, so evil men die on satin sheets in 400-dollar-a-night hotel rooms, while good ones breathe their last lying face down in cold, dark alleyways, their bodies growing stiff and blue on beds of rain-soaked newspaper. ~ Gar Anthony Haywood

FORM IS ECSTATIC

There is a shimmering excitement in being sentient and shaped. The

caravan master sees his camels lost in it, nose to tail, as he himself is,

his friend, and the stranger coming toward them. A gardener watches the

sky break into song, cloud wobbly with what it is. Bud, thorn, the same.

Wind, water, wandering this essential state. Fire, ground, gone. That's

how it is with the outside. Form is ecstatic. Now imagine the inner:

soul, intelligence, the secret worlds!
And don't think the garden loses its

ecstasy in winter. It's quiet, but the roots are down there rioutous.

If someone bumps you in the street, don't be angry. Everyone careens

about in this surprise. Respond in kind. Let the knots untie, turbans

be given away. Someone drunk on this could drink a donkeyload a night.

Believer, unbeliever, cynic, lover, all combine in the spirit-form we are,

but no one yet is awake like Shams. ~ Rumi

Smart power is neither hard nor soft. It is both. Joseph ~ Joseph S. Nye Jr.

When the short days of winter came, dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners. When we met in the street the houses had grown sombre. The space of sky above us was the colour of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the silent street. ~ James Joyce

In an area such as this the possibility of violence for the sake of robbery or even mere amusement is always something to be reckoned with. Our little expeditionary party had tried to dress as plainly as possible, but our great-cloaks simply by their cleanliness attracted the sinister attention of the loiterers on the street. ~ K.W. Jeter

This message (that attempting to beat the market is futile) can never be sold on Wall Street because it is in effect telling stock analysts to drop dead. ~ Paul Samuelson

In the living room Derek sprawled on the floor on a blanket, his eyes closed, his body human, corded with hard muscle, and covered only with a strategically placed towel. Julie knelt by him, long tweezers in her hand.
"What's going on?"
"Quills," she said. "Very thin quills. There was a magic plant and he decided it would be a good idea to give it a hug. Because he is smart that way."
So they had taken Julie with them. Considering where I'd gone and what I did while there, I didn't have room to talk.
Derek didn't bother opening his eyes. "I wasn't giving it a hug. I was shielding Ella."
"Mm-hm." Julie plucked a thin needle from his stomach. "You shielded her really well. Because it's not like we didn't have Carlos with us."
Carlos was a firebug. The plant must've gotten torched.
"We'll need to work on mixed-unit tactics," Curran said. He looked tired. It must've been hell. "So what did you do in Mishmar?"
Umm. Ehh. In my head I had somehow expected Erra to stay in Mishmar.
"I saw my father," I said. Start small.
"How was that?" Curran asked.
"He's a little upset with me."
"Aha."
"I broke Mishmar a little bit."
The three of them looked at me.
"But it was mostly my grandmother who did it."
"How much is a little bit?" Derek asked.
"There might be a crack. About maybe seven feet at the widest point."
Derek laughed.
"And what else?" Curran asked.
Perceptive bastard.
"And this." ~ Ilona Andrews

We should all feel confident in our intelligence. By the way, intelligence to me isn't just being book-smart or having a college degree; it's trusting your gut instincts, being intuitive, thinking outside the box, and sometimes just realizing that things need to change and being smart enough to change it. ~ Tabatha Coffey

It's funny how really smart people have the most unusual holes in their worldview and perception. ~ Nalini Singh

I had been kissed once by someone I liked. His name was Ray and he was Indian. He had an accent and was dark. I wasn't supposed to like him. Clarissa called his large eyes, with their half closed lids, "freak-a-delic," but he was nice and smart and helped me cheat on my algebra exam while pretending he hadn't. He kissed me by my locker the day before we turned in our photos for the yearbook. When the yearbook came out at the end of the summer, I saw that under his picture he had answered the standard "My heart belongs to" with "Susie Salmon." I guess he had had plans. I remember his lips were chapped. ~ Alice Sebold

On the main street of one village she passed a vast house, pillared and walled, with shutters over the windows and a pair of stone lions guarding the steps, and she thought that perhaps she might live there, dusting the lions each morning and patting their heads good night. ~ Shirley Jackson

I just don't like that you can either be ugly and smart or pretty and dumb, or ugly and nice or pretty and mean. ~ Jennifer Lawrence

Jaidee never told her how they first met, not even after they were married. It was too humiliating to admit to what she had seen in him that night on the street. To tell her that the man she loved was that other fool as well.

And now he prepares to do something worse. He puts on his white dress uniform while Niwat and Surat watch. They are solemn as he prepares to bring himself low in their eyes. He kneels before them.

"Whatever you see today, do not let it shame you."

They nod solemnly, but he knows they do not understand. They are too young to understand pressures and necessity. He pulls them close, and then he goes out into blinding sunlight. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

Wilton Spencer," she said softly, "why do you have to be so damned smart?"
Spence smiled. "Darned smart," he said; then he wiped her tears away and kissed her on the tip of her nose. ~ Jackie French Koller

I listened in amazement. You saw a face on an American street, or in an office, and you had no idea that a tragic epic lay behind it. ~ Greg Iles

There is two rules to win your battle,Fight smart & fight alone ~ Mohammed Sekouty

She could smell the wrongness in the air and it made her wolf nervous. It felt like something was watching them, as if the wrongness had an intelligence - and it didn't help to remember that at least one of the people they were hunting could hide from their senses.
Anna fought the urge to turn around, to take Charles's hand or slide under his arm and let his presence drive away the wrongness. Once, she would have, but now she had the uneasy feeling that he might back away as he almost had when she sat on his lap in the boat, before Brother Wolf had taken over.
Maybe he was just tired of her. She had been telling everyone that there was something wrong with him...but Bran knew his son and thought the problem was her. Bran was smart and perceptive; she ought to have considered that he was right.
Charles was old. He'd seen and experienced so much - next to him she was just a child. His wolf had chosen her without consulting Charles at all. Maybe he'd have preferred someone who knew more. Someone beautiful and clever who...
"Anna?" said Charles. "What's wrong? Are you crying?" He moved in front of her and stopped, forcing her to stop walking, too.
She opened her mouth and his fingers touched her wet cheeks.
"Anna," he said, his body going still. "Call on your wolf."
"You should have someone stronger," she told him miserably. "Someone who could help you when you need it, instead of getting sent home because I can't endure what you have to ~ Patricia Briggs

In many careers, crucial decisions are deliberated in meetings with white boards and breakout sessions. Options are weighed. Exploratory committees are formed. Ideas are mulled over and then discarded. Gourmet coffee is consumed. Perhaps finger sandwiches are ordered from the catering joint down the street. The whole process can take hours, days, weeks.

One of the most crucial decisions you make as a cop is Shoot or Don't Shoot. Given how quickly situations can go all sorts of wrong, you will probably have about a second and a half to deliberate before you make this call. Critics then have a lifetime to pick apart your decision over that coffee and those sandwiches. ~ Adam Plantinga

Jace set what he was holding down on the windowsill and reached out to her. She came to lean against him, and his hand slid up under her t-shirt and rested caressingly, possessively, on the small of her back. He bent to kiss her, gently at first, but the gentleness went quickly and soon she was pressed up against the glass of the window, his hands at the hem of her shirt - his shirt
"Jace." She moved a little bit away. "I'm pretty sure people down there in the street can see us."
"We could ... " He gestured toward the bed. "Move ... over there."
She grinned. "You said that like it took you a while to come up with the idea."
When he spoke, his voice was muffled against her neck. "What can I say, you make my thought processes slow down. Now I know what it's like to be a normal person."
"How ... is it?" The things he was doing with his hands under the t-shirt were distracting.
"Terrible. I'm already way behind on my quota of witty comments for the day. ~ Cassandra Clare

Dom stood dumbfounded as Jane disappeared into the street. Then he hurried to catch up to her, to get some answers.
She knew. How the blazes did she know?
The answer to that was obvious. "So, Nancy told you the truth, did she?" he snapped as he fell into step beside her.
Jane didn't reply, just kept marching toward the inn like a Hussar bent on battle.
"When?" he demanded. "How long have you known?"
"For nine years, you…you conniving…lying--"
"Nine years? You knew all this time, and you didn't say anything?"
"Say anything!" She halted just short of the innyard entrance to glare at him. "How the devil was I to do that? You disappeared into the streets of London as surely as if you were a footpad or a pickpocket."
She planted her hands on her hips. "Oh, I read about your heroic exploits from time to time, but other than that, I neither heard nor saw anything of you until last year, when you showed up at George's town house. It was only pure chance that I happened to be at dinner with Nancy that day. As you'll recall, you didn't stay long. Nor did you behave as if you would welcome any confidences."
Remembering the cool reception he'd given her, he glanced away, unable to bear the accusation in her eyes. "No, I suppose I didn't."
"Besides," she said, "it hardly mattered that I knew the truth. I assumed that if you ever changed your mind about making a life with me, you would seek me out. Since you never did, you were clearly dete ~ Sabrina Jeffries

I think most importantly the reason we've been on the upswing is Ring of Honor has been very smart about the speed of its growth. ROH is not a company that says ok we're going to throw all this money in and let's just go for it. ROH has the business approach of slow but steady. ~ Adam Cole

Every culture has its southerners -- people who work as little as they can, preferring to dance, drink, sing brawl, kill their unfaithful spouses; who have livelier gestures, more lustrous eyes, more colorful garments, more fancifully decorated vehicles, a wonderful sense of rhythm, and charm, charm, charm; unambitious, no, lazy, ignorant, superstitious, uninhibited people, never on time, conspicuously poorer (how could it be otherwise, say the northerners); who for all their poverty and squalor lead enviable lives -- envied, that is, by work-driven, sensually inhibted, less corruptly governed northerners. We are superior to them, say the northerners, clearly superior. We do not shirk our duties or tell lies as a matter of course, we work hard, we are punctual, we keep reliable accounts. But they have more fun than we do ... They caution[ed] themselves as people do who know they are part of a superior culture: we mustn't let ourselves go, mustn't descend to the level of the ... jungle, street, bush, bog, hills, outback (take your pick). For if you start dancing on tables, fanning yourself, feeling sleepy when you pick up a book, developing a sense of rhythm, making love whenever you feel like it -- then you know. The south has got you. ~ Susan Sontag

To Hell with all racialists,' she said aloud. 'And to Hell with eugenics, degenerate heredity, miscegenation and frauds who pile up skulls like a conqueror as well. May they choke on their bones.' A passing gentleman boggled at her and crossed to the other side of La Trobe Street. 'There is no place for them in the Kingdom of Heaven,' she added, rolling the phrase over her tongue and filing it for future reference. ~ Kerry Greenwood

Music is pretty much the lifestyle, not the music itself. The lifestyle really pulled me off the street. Made me want to do something organized and positive. ~ Brandon Thomas

I would say most people assume that I'm not very smart or educated or earnest, because I have this image that I'm sort of narcissistic, chasing attention, and wanting people to like me. It makes me laugh because I've done plenty of interviews and when you read the article from beginning to end you can see that I'm not your typical music video model. ~ Megan Fox

People love it when you give your secrets away, and sometimes, if you're smart about it, they'll reward you by buying the things you're selling. ~ Austin Kleon

The real problem devolves around class lines once again: it's the street hormones that folks without insurance, or folks who are too young for prescriptions without parental okay, use. Sometimes those hormones can be pretty rough. ~ Kate Bornstein