Suburban Life Quotes

For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is the flowering of a symbol center. It is a poem grafted onto sturdier stock. ~ William H Gass

Neighborhood is a word that has come to sound like a Valentine. As a sentimental concept, 'neighborhood' is harmful to city planning. It leads to attempts at warping city life into imitations of town or suburban life. Sentimentality plays with sweet intentions in place of good sense. ~ Jane Jacobs

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

With my new habit of carrying binoculars everywhere, I feel imbued with a readiness to see, an attitude that my life itself is a kind of field trip. The urban naturalist has the terrific luxury of stepping out her door and into "the field," without long rides or carpools, or putting money in for gas and Dairy Queen. When does the field trip being? Whenever we start paying attention. ~ Lyanda Lynn Haupt

The parking lot was packed with cars. Most had come with families. The number of minivans really stood out. All minivans look identical to me. Like cans of tasteless biscuits. ~ Haruki Murakami

Urban reinvention is what has been called the "consumer city." The post-World War II years brought about the rise of suburbanization and the creation of the commuter city. People chose suburban life for its amenities and comforts and commuted into the city only for work and the occasional show. But Vancouver and Los Angeles are two urban areas that reversed the trend. They became consumer cities marked by a new phenomenon - the reverse commuter. Increasingly, these and other cities offer residents a quality of life they could not find elsewhere in the region - a dizzying variety of artistic, educational, cultural, and entertainment events and ~ Timothy Keller

Playdate. (n) A Date arranged by adults in which young children are brought together, usually at the home of one of them, for the premeditated purpose of "playing". A feature of contemporary American upscale suburban life in which "neighborhoods" have ceased to exist, and children no longer trail in and out of "neighbor childrens" houses or play in "backyards". In the absence of sidewalks in newer "gated" coummunities, children cannot "walk" to playdates but must be driven by adults, usually mothers. A "playdate" is never initiated by the players (i.e., children), but only by their mothers.
In American-suburban social climbing through playdating, this is the chapter you've been awaiting. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

And from mayors to average citizens, we have heard expressed a shared belief in a direct causal relationship between the character of the physical environment and the social health of families and the community at large. For all of the household conveniences, cars, and shopping malls, life seems less satisfying to most Americans, particularly in the ubiquitous middle-class suburbs, where a sprawling, repetitive, and forgettable landscape has supplanted the original promise of suburban life with a hollow imitation. ~ Andres Duany

Perhaps I should explain to him that it has been my particular way of frustrating time's attrition, postponing death and sustaining the illusion that one can always erase everything and make a fresh start. ~ Nathacha Appanah

The biodiesel we use is 100 percent, it has no petroleum in it. It was already used in fryers throughout our local area. It's already had one life and now it's going to be used again, which is nice. ~ Daryl Hannah

In an unmoored life like mine, sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Hobbes: "Whatcha doin'?"
Calvin: "Getting rich!"
Hobbes: "Really?"
Calvin: "Yep. I'm writing a self-help book! There's a huge market for this stuff."
Calvin: "First you convince people there's something wrong with them. That's easy because advertising has already conditioned people to feel insecure about their weight, looks, social status, sex appeal, and so on."
Calvin: "Next, you convince them that the problem is not their fault and that they're victims of larger forces. That's easy, because it's what people believe anyway. Nobody wants to be responsible for his own situation."
Calvin: "Finally, you convince them that with your expert advice and encouragement, they can conquer their problem and be happy."
Hobbes: "Ingenious. What problem will you help people solve?"
Calvin: "Their addiction to self-help books!"
Calvin: "My book is called, "Shut up and stop whining: How to do something with your life besides think about yourself.""
Hobbes: "You should probably wait for the advance before you buy anything."
Calvin: "The trouble is... If my program works, I won't be able to write a sequel. ~ Bill Watterson

For many years I have been asking myself why intelligent children act unintelligently at school. The simple answer is, "Because they're scared." I used to suspect that children's defeatism had something to do with their bad work in school, but I thought I could clear it away with hearty cries of "Onward! You can do it!" What I now see for the first time is the mechanism by which fear destroys intelligence, the way it affects a child's whole way of looking at, thinking about, and dealing with life. So we have two problems, not one: to stop children from being afraid, and then to break them of the bad thinking habits into which their fears have driven them.

What is most surprising of all is how much fear there is in school. Why is so little said about it. Perhaps most people do not recognize fear in children when they see it. They can read the grossest signs of fear; they know what the trouble is when a child clings howling to his mother; but the subtler signs of fear escaping them. It is these signs, in children's faces, voices, and gestures, in their movements and ways of working, that tell me plainly that most children in school are scared most of the time, many of them very scared. Like good soldiers, they control their fears, live with them, and adjust themselves to them. But the trouble is, and here is a vital difference between school and war, that the adjustments children make to their fears are almost wholly bad, destructive of their intelligence and capacit ~ John Holt

It depends on me whether life is good or not. Not on life, on me. ~ Alice Herz-Sommer

I want to have fun. Life ain't no dress rehearsal. I want to have fun. I'm a comedian; I ain't no politician. So everything I do is with humor, with love. ~ Bernie Mac

How sad was it that grief had a shelf life, he thought. It's only fresh and raw for so long before it begins to spoil. And soon enough, it would be replaced by a newer, brighter heartache - the old one discarded and eventually forgotten. ~ T. Greenwood

How sad that I couldn't get myself sober to share a life with him, but I could do it to show him I didn't need him. ~ Josh Lanyon

Star light, star bright, the many stars I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, keep this girl for the rest of my life ~ J.J. McAvoy

In the middle of all beliefs you'll find a single lie. ~ Samuel L. Drew

Sometimes when you're struggling to see kindness in the world, you need to be the creator of it to remind yourself it does exist. ~ Truth Devour

Do not take the advantage of all the little luxuries a house of a stranger may offer you. ~ Auliq Ice

He stepped back, away from her. He shook his head in disbelief. "You know, I shouldn't try to go out with career women. You're all stricken. A guy can really tell what life has done to you. I do better with women who have part-time jobs."

"Oh, yes?" said Zoe. She had once read an article entitled "Professional Women and the Demographics of Grief." Or no, it was a poem: If there were a lake, the moonlight would dance across it in conniptions. She remembered that line. But perhaps the title was "The Empty House: Aesthetics of Bareness." Or maybe "Space Gypsies: Girls in Academe." She had forgotten. ~ Lorrie Moore

Rather be a thin dog free,
than to be a fat one chained ~ Thabiso Monkoe

So visibly shaken by some recent loss of principle that it would have been noticed by a stranger across the aisle ~ John Cheever

A significant number of people have their brain placed at the bottom half of their body. Thinking with the bottom half have made them extremely stupid and easy to manipulate. ~ Kambiz Shabankare

Spare all I have, and take my life. ~ George Farquhar

You interest me,' he said, and his tone suggested this fact itself surprised him, meant something more to him than perhaps it should: a man surprised by being interested was living a piss-poor facsimile of life, in her view. ~ Meredith Duran

However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind. ~ Douglas MacArthur

To me rites of passage through life, that's a wonderful, beautiful thing. ~ Lance Henriksen

She had been given a wonderful gift: life. Sometimes it was cruelly taken away too soon, but it's what you did with it that counted, not how long it lasted. ~ Cecelia Ahern

I'm convinced that people come across others in life whose souls are completely compatible with their own. Some refer to them as soul mates. Some refer to it as true love. Some people believe their souls are compatible with more than one person, and I'm beginning to understand how true that might be. I've known since the moment I met Maggie years ago that our souls were compatible, and they are. That's not even a question. However, I also know that my soul is compatible with Sydney's, but it's also so much more than that. Our souls aren't just compatible - they're perfectly attuned. I ~ Colleen Hoover

Balance suggests a perfect equilibrium. There is no such thing. That is a false expectation ... There are going to be priorities and dimensions of your life, how you integrate them is how you find true happiness. ~ Denise Morrison

After you've work hard to get what you want, take the time to enjoy it. ~ H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

[T]his is an enemy for life, as well as an enemy of life. ~ Christopher Hitchens

To achieve anything great in life you must be willing to make a sacrifice. ~ Kelly Rowland

It's time to go. We'll continue this therapy session later." "So you're my therapist now?" "Apparently, I'm a life coach for idiots. ~ Larry Correia

The stories Hemingway told, the life he lived, all of it ended with a squeeze of a finger on a trigger. What else could he have done if he had put the shotgun down, gone back to bed? What would he have learned in that moment of choosing to live, what other books would have been written? Meanwhile, ~ Kamal Ravikant

She was a great wife ... and a wonderful mother, a good daughter, a devoted sister and a truly nice person, which doesn't sound like much but it was one of her ambitions, to be a nice person, and she really got there, I think. She was always there. Or close, anyway.
Of course, she did spend her first thrity-nine years worrying too much and waiting for rotten things to happen to her. Then when they did, and some of the things were obviously, really, truly rotten, she realised she could have a lot more fun not waiting for them.
So you know what she did then? She just stopped seeing the rot. ~ Sarah-Kate Lynch

Maezr smiled. A hundred years ago, Ender, we found out some things. That when a commander's life is in danger he becomes afraid, and fear slows down his thinking. When a commander knows that he's killing people, he becomes cautious or insane, and neither of those help him do well. And when he's mature, when he has responsibilities and an understanding of the world, he becomes cautious and sluggish and can't do his job. So we trained children, who didn't know anything but the game, and never knew when it would become real. That was the theory, and you proved that the theory worked. ~ Orson Scott Card

Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told. ~ Colum McCann