The City Of Shells Quotes

But her favorite is the Houdini fantasy. Big Red disagrees with his biographers, who say that he was driven by his longing to shuck off this mortal coil. She knows that he was all the time just searching for a box that could hold him. ~ Karen Russell

Billy ran around with a rare old crew
And he knew an Arsenal from Tottenham blue
We'd be a darn sight better off if we knew
Where Billy's bones are resting now

Billy saw a copper and he hit him in the knee
And he took him down from six to five foot three
Then he hit him fair and square in the do-re-mi
That copper won't be having any family

Hey Billy son where are you now?
Don't you know that we need you now?
With a rat-tat-tat and the old kowtow
Where are Billy's bones resting now?

Billy went away with a peace-keeping force
'Cause he liked a bloody good fight, of course
Went away in an old khaki van
To the banks of the River Jordan

Billy saw the Arabs and he had 'em on the run
When he got 'em in the range of his sub-machine gun
Then he had the Israelis in his sights, went a rat-tat-tat
And they ran like shites

Hey Billy son where are you now?
Don't you know that we need you now?
With a rat-tat-tat and the old kowtow
Where are Billy's bones resting now?

One night Billy had a rare old time,
Laughing and singing on the Lebanon line
Came back to camp not looking too pretty
Never even got to see the holy city

Now Billy's out there in the desert sun
And his mother cries when the morning comes
And there's mothers crying all over this world
For their poor dead darling boys and girls
< ~ Shane MacGowan

The most uncomplicated thing of all!' he replied. 'For someone well acquainted with the fifth dimension, it costs nothing to expand space to the desired proportions. I'll say more, respected lady - to devil knows what proportions! I, however,' Koroviev went on chattering, 'have known people who had no idea, not only of the fifth dimension, but generally of anything at all, and who nevertheless performed absolute wonders in expanding their space. Thus, for instance, one city-dweller, as I've been told, having obtained a three-room apartment on Zemlyanoy Val, transformed it instantly, without any fifth dimension or other things that addle the brain, into a four-room apartment by dividing one room in half with a partition. ~ Mikhail Bulgakov

In 1995, each cast at The Second City was made up of four men and two women. When it was suggested that they switch one of the companies to three men and three women, the producers and directors had the same panicked reaction. 'You can't do that. There won't be enough parts to go around. There won't be enough for the girls.' This made no sense to me, probably because I speak English and have never had a head injury. We weren't doing _Death of a Salesman._ _We were making up the show ourselves. How could there not be enough parts?_ If everyone had something to contribute, there would be enough. The insulting implication, of course, was that the women wouldn't have any ideas. ~ Tina Fey

The speeding toy cars produce in the viewer the stress of living in a dynamic, active and bustling 21st-century city, ~ Chris Burden

As Mayor of San Francisco, I will work hard to ensure that, in the event of natural or man-made disasters, San Franciscans are prepared and our City is protected. ~ Gavin Newsom

I've probably saved more black lives as mayor of New York City than any mayor in New York City with the possible exception of Mike Bloomberg, who was there for 12 years. ~ Rudy Giuliani

Then she spotted in the corner, glowing wonderfully, a Wurlitzer jukebox. ' Holy shit!' It was like being on a commuter train through the Bronx and seeing among the piles of crushed cars a pasture with a lone white horse. ~ Garth Risk Hallberg

The stress of everything seemed to be making Newt fall fast. And they'd left him all alone outside the city. "You could very well save him," Janson said quietly. ~ James Dashner

The children themselves, before they get access to a car, are captives of their suburb, save for those families where the housewives surrender continuity in their own lives to chauffeur their children to lessons, doctors, and other services that could be reached via public transport in the city. ~ David Riesman

There was a big number over the door of the building. The number was five. Before the Americans could go inside, their only English-speaking guard told them to memorize their simple address, in case they got lost in the big city. Their address was this: 'Schlachthof-fünf.' Schlachthof means slaughterhouse. Fünf was good old five. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The seeds of civilization are in every culture, but it is city life that brings them to fruition. ~ Susanne Katherina Langer

In the shores of twilight,
Wide and deep as your eyes,
I swim.
In a way, I feel her

Night, a crowned goddess commanding the stars to swim,
So peaceful, even death escapes into serenity.
Stars so far, they seem as they tell the living world,
lights, live into shinning, die into nothingness.
Worlds I want to travel, away to shadows of your eyes in the hold of your lips.
So far, so far away....
As your kiss, as my lover.

Night,
With a soft touch,
Touches my face, winds to the trees, sunlight on grass, life, breath, so quite, death screams in the abyss, a black pearl with grains of sand.

The dance of the night..reminds me of her.
Her tender laughter, the gleam in her
enormous eyes, her soft whirlpool lips.
As a reflection from dark streams,
She reveals hot love,
Nothing hidden, no shame,
just love that hurts.
The solace in the night makes me cry...
The lights of stars as arrows to me.

Night,
Hits my eyes,
Beauty of the wilderness,
Calling me,
Homeless in a city, naked on cold steel
At home with the sea,
with night above,
foam of waters breaks below.
As my companion,
friend I speak to.
I say to the night sky.
Does she love me?
When travels of the heart goes outside of me, outside the seas into clouds of your warmth,
To another place in her heart tryin ~ Albert Alexander Bukoski

You are all there, the people in the city. I can't believe I was ever among you. When you are away from a city it becomes a fantasy. Any town, New York, Chicago, with its people, becomes improbable with distance. Just as I am improbable here, in Illinois, in a small town by a quiet lake. All of us improbable to one another because we are not present to one another. And it is so good to hear the sounds, and know that Mexico City is still there and the people moving and living. ~ Ray Bradbury

I should have moved to the forest long ago, I would think to myself, perhaps to the Black Forest although the place probably wasn't half as sequestered as I imagined, though no doubt there would be far fewer faces and voices, only the imperceptible cries of ants, the footsteps of spiders and the sound of trees growing. But the madness that remote places cultivate is not to be taken lightly and I've always found something particularly disquieting in madness left to quietly ferment on its own; the social functions required of us help us maintain, at the very last, an illusion of normality, and for that reason alone I had, until that point in my life, remained in the city. ~ Chloe Aridjis

In no particular order: baked goods, Colin Farrell's eyebrows, and the thighs of rugby players everywhere. And to the city of Edinburgh, where a love story was born. ~ L. H. Cosway

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

Don't tell me Kinshasa, the poorest city in the poorest country in the world, a place where the average per capita income is one goat bell, two bootleg Michael Jackson cassette tapes, and three sips of potable water per year, thinks we're too poor to associate with. ~ Paul Beatty

The strengths landscape architecture draws from its garden design heritage include: the Vitruvian design tradition of balancing utility, firmness and beauty; use of the word 'landscape' to mean 'a good place' - as the objective of the design process; a comprehensive approach to open space planning involving city parks, greenways and nature outside towns; a planning theory about the contextualisation of development projects; the principle that development plans should be adapted to their landscape context. ~ Tom Turner

The city was lovely. There could be no place in the world to which he belonged so completely.
That was why he'd always dreamed of leaving, and why he'd always been so afraid to go. ~ Daniel Alarcon

And so I sat in the centre of this old city that I loved, which itself sat at the bottom of a tiny island. I was surrounded by people I loved, and I felt happy and miserable at the same time. I thought of what a mess everything had been, but that it wouldn't always be this way. ~ Hanif Kureishi

Paris is the playwright's delight. New York is the home of directors. London, however, is the actor's city, the only one in the world. In London, actors are given their head. ~ Orson Welles

But you're out of another world old kid ... You ought to live on top of the Woolworth Building in an apartment made of cutglass and cherry blossoms. ~ John Dos Passos

Evil exists," he says, not flinching at the word. "I believe that what the rich have done to the poor people in this city is something that a preacher would call evil. Somebody has power. Pretending that they don't so they don't need to use it to help people-that is my idea of evil. ~ Jonathan Kozol

To Alec, love always
meant this: his shining city of eternal light. The land of lost dreams
reclaimed, his first kiss and his last. ~ Cassandra Clare

There are days when I walk through the center of Stockholm when I get this sudden feeling of happiness - a sense of belonging and at the same time gratitude that I'm so privileged that I can live my life in my city. ~ Bjorn Ulvaeus

Just think what will happen when the tournament is over and all the visitors have gone. The residents of Moscow, crowded by the housing crisis, will flee to your magnificent city. The capital will be transferred automatically to Vasyuki. The government will move here. Vasyuki will be renamed New Moscow, and Moscow will be Old Vasyuki. Leningraders and Kharkovians will grind their teeth, but they won't be able to do a thing about it. New Moscow will become the elegant cultural center of Europe, and soon, of the whole world. ~ Ilya Ilf

But the power in this case is real indeed. You doubt the mystery and power of these aircraft and their markings? They are aeons old and yet they still operate!"
"You've seen them fly? Where do they go? I am wondering if there is a city we can reach."
"Before you woke from your coffin, they flew indeed. Turning and turning in the widening gyre. What does that suggest?"
"Um. Some rough beast is slouching toward Bethlehem waiting to be born, maybe?"
"No doubt the spirit of prophecy escapes your lips! It must be prophecy because I cannot grok what you are saying."
"Sorry. Won't happen again. It suggests a search pattern. ~ John C. Wright

In any city with lots of skyscrapers, lots of skyline, the moon seems bigger than it is. It's called the moon illusion. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Domestic

If, when studying road atlases
while taking, as you call it, your
morning dump, you shout down to
me names like Miami City, Franconia,
Cancún, as places for you to take
me to from here, can I help it if

all I can think is things that are
stupid, like he loves me he loves me
not? I don't think so. No more
than, some mornings, waking to your
hands around me, and remembering
these are the fingers, the hands I've

over and over given myself to, I can
stop myself from wondering does that
mean they're the same I'll grow
old with. Yesterday, in the café I
keep meaning to show you, I thought
this is how I'll die maybe, alone,

somewhere too far away from wherever
you are then, my heart racing from
espresso and too many cigarettes,
my head down on the table's cool
marble, and the ceiling fan turning
slowly above me, like fortune, the

part of fortune that's half-wished-
for only - it did not seem the worst
way. I thought this is another of
those things I'm always forgetting
to tell you, or don't choose to
tell you, or I tell you but only

in the same way, each morning, I
keep myself from saying too loud I
love you until the moment you flush
the toilet, then I say it, when the
rumble of water running down through
the house could mean ~ Carl Phillips

Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another. ~ Plato

The city of Paris is determined to promote the happiness-on-a-bike fantasy. Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo wants to turn the city into the most bike-friendly capital in the world. ~ Elaine Sciolino