Urban Transport Quotes

If you are a pedestrian, you are not mechanical enough to be of priority to traffic engineers. ~ Archimedes Muzenda

Luz leaned her head against the window. The bus was already on the outskirts of Mexico City and the endless urban landscape had never seemed so gray and or so harsh. Most of the city was nothing like the old money enclave of Lomas Virreyes where the Vegas lived or Polanco where the city's most expensive restaurants and clubs catered to the wealthy.
The bus passed block after block of sooty concrete cut into houses and shops and shanties and parking garages and mercados and schools and more shanties where people lived surrounded by hulks of old cars and plastic things no one bothered to throw away. Sometimes there wasn't concrete for homes, just sheets of corrugated metal and big pieces of cardboard that would last until the next rainy season. It was the detritus of millions upon millions of people who had nowhere to go and nothing to do and were angry about it.
The Reforma newspaper had reported a few weeks ago that the city's population was in excess of 28 million--more than 25 percent of the country's entire population--and Luz believed it. All of those people were clawing at each other in a huge fishbowl suspended 7500 feet above sea level, where there was never enough oxygen and the air was thin and dirty.
The city was hemmed in by mountains on all sides; mountains like Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl that sometimes spewed smoke and ash and prevented the contaminatión from cars and factories and sewers from escaping. Luz privately thought of it as la sopa-- ~ Carmen Amato

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

Bright specks that were commute ships, little eggs that carried businessmen and white-collar workers around. The huge transport tubes that shot masses of workmen to factories and labor camps from their housing units. ~ Philip K. Dick

When gasoline and rubber are rationed, electric power and transport facilities are becoming increasingly scarce, and manpower shortages are developing, it is difficult for people to understand their increased use for other than the most vital needs of war. ~ William Lyon Mackenzie King

A tiny cage of butterflies suddenly buzzed around the inside of her gut. Her superhot professor wanted to take a nighttime stroll with her and he was offering her his jacket. Before she could decide whether she wanted to be the type of girl who did that sort of thing with her professor, which was clearly inappropriate, she grasped the leather jacket in her hands and slipped it on. Aw, shucks, who was she kidding? She totally was that kind of girl. ~ Kait Ballenger

In the library
I search for a good book.
We have many books,
says Mrs. Rose, the librarian,
and ALL of them are good.
Of course she says that. It's her job.
But do I want to read about
Trucks
Trains and
Transport?
Or even
Horses
Houses and
Hyenas?

In the fiction corner
there are pink boks
full of princesses
and girls who want to be princesses
and black books
about bad boys
and brave boys
and brawny boys.

Where is the book
about a girl
whose poems don't rhyme
and whose Granny is fading?
Pearl, says Mrs. Rose, the bell has rung.

I go back to class
empty-handed
empty headed
empty-hearted. ~ Sally Murphy

The urban myth that carrots are good for your eyesight originated in wartime disinformation, intended to stop the Nazis wondering why the British were getting so good at spotting raiding bombers. ~ Ian Stewart

We listen to the old radio shows. Light flares and spreads across the blue-banded edge, sunrise, sunset, the urban grids in shadow. There is a sweetness in the tenor voice of the young man singing, a simple vigour that time and distance and random noise have enveloped in eloquence and yearning. Every sound, every lilt of strings has this veneer of age. ~ Don DeLillo

I was beginning to think that Simon just had a bad case of OCD, ADD, and PMS. With a little BS and OMG mixed in. ~ Dannika Dark

The smoke stung at the corners of Uri's eyes as he struggled to open them. He could hear the battle sounds all around him and smell the iron from the blood drenched warfare in the air. Much to his surprise, death had not yet claimed him. He could feel Raimie's body under his own, no warmth came from him, however, and Uri feared the worse. Over his shoulder, he heard a large blast and the earth shook under him.
The trackers had obviously followed someone through. There were hundreds of designated transportation locations as part of the evacuation drill. Absolutely nobody was allowed to transport directly to a primary facility for this exact reason. If a tracker were to follow your transportation signature to the next facility, the Guardians could be nearly wiped out in one night. The secrecy of the facilities and cloaking spells were key in their safety.
Uri knew if he or Raimie had any chance of surviving, he needed to get clear of the fighting and find a healer. Attempting to sit up, he braced his weight on the earth just beside Raimie's head. He quickly reconsidered as the unbearable pain shot through his side. Running his hand down to the source, he could feel the shaft of an arrow jutting out from his side; a warm wetness covered his fingertips.
In the distance, Uri could hear someone crying out in agony, not a voice he recognized, yet the pain in it seemed all too familiar. Another blast rang out from behind him as Uri slumped to the ground, groaning in pa ~ Wendy Owens

It had been her mercy, her refusal to kill a known enemy, that had made me realize the Order was wrong. It was because of her that I was here now, risking my life to protect the creatures I'd once driven toward extinction. Because a dragon had spared the life of a soldier of St. George, everything had changed. ~ Julie Kagawa

Love is a thing that exists to spread and passed on to others. ~ Sara Urban

Every city has to deal with the problem of cars and public transport. ~ Jaime Lerner

You can't fight like this. You're not prepared and you are in no means in control of your emotions."
Blood rushed to her head. "Fuck you!"
"My point exactly. ~ Mary Abshire

I'm more than twisted. I'm the worst kind of vampire ... But you're the one who's craving me, so what does that make you? ~ Lindsay J. Pryor

Never trust an exclamation point. ~ Linda Urban

His first thought as he stared death in the face was that he was never going to meet his daughter. At least not on this side of the Fade. His second and final was that he couldn't believe he'd never told Blay he loved him. In all the minutes and hours and nights of his life, in all the words he'd spoken to the male over the years they'd known each other, he'd only ever pushed him away. And now it was too late. ~ J.R. Ward

Having a rough time on the trail is not the same as the irredeemable frustrations of urban life, such as being stuck in traffic or wading through a crowded store. Difficulty on the trail, like this long and rainy day, is usually reflected upon fondly. There is the soothing, rhythmic beat of rainfall, the feeling that the woods are being washed and rejuvenated, the odors of the woods awakened by moisture. There is appreciation for the most simple of things, such as a flat and dry piece of ground and something warm to eat. There is satisfaction in having endured hardship, pride in being able to do for myself in the outdoors. There is strength in knowing I can do it again tomorrow. ~ David Miller

Lovers, even those who are married, always exist autonomously of one another, no matter how close they are or how long they've known each other. That's why jealously can flare in even the most intimate relationships.
Because you know that at some basic level this person exists separately from you. No mater how close you are, the landscape of their life is always tinted a different hue than your own. - Hunter to Joanna ~ Vicki Pettersson

Hagen Koch: 'There was no other transport. People on bikes could evade checkpoints, they could have secret meetings ~ Anna Funder

You and me," Ulrik said. "No friendship has ever been stronger, and there's nothing that will ever tear apart our bond."
Con looked at him, a wide smile in place. "Brothers."
"Brothers. ~ Donna Grant

I swear. Tell someone you're a vampire or a werewolf and they think it's sexy. Tell someone you're a witch and they go from zero to Torquemada in three seconds flat. ~ Laura Oliva

Beautiful people don't need coats. They've got their auras to keep them warm. ~ Jennifer Donnelly

This is capitalism's constant urban conundrum: what makes cities profitable is inherently at odds with the needs of the poor and middle classes (who are needed for a city to function), and centrally located land has inherent value if it can be made amenable to the rich. Gentrification may be a new expression of this conflict between land value and the needs of the poor, but it's a problem as old as capitalism itself. ~ P.E. Moskowitz

If we're going to talk about transport, I would say that the great city is not the one that has highways, but one where a child on a tricycle or bicycle can go safely everywhere. ~ Enrique Penalosa

Aidan ducked his head, burying his face in the crook of her neck. "Damn, you feel good," he whispered, his deep voice hoarse with need.
It only excited her more. "What do you say we forget dinner and the movie?" she whispered, her breath shortening.
"How you tempt me," he rumbled, tightening his hold.
"If I tempted you as much as you tempt me," she pronounced boldly, "we would both be naked right now. ~ Dianne Duvall

In America, black urban teenagers have long been lacking in inclusion. In France, there is a comparable lack of inclusion among North Africans. In much of Europe, there has been little attempt to include the Roma. ~ Edmund Phelps

Have you ever met a dragon that couldn't talk? ~ Deborah Blake

Objects are the markers of our humanity. Everything we hold onto has meaning for us. Those things are souvenirs that can transport us to that exact moment in time and make us feel that emotion all over again.
-Syn ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Fix things before they get too big for fixing. ~ Linda Urban

Anything that works to transport more glucose into the fat cells - insulin, for example, or rising blood sugar - will lead to the conversion of more fatty acids into triglycerides, and the storage of more calories as fat. ~ Gary Taubes

My heart seemed to stop. Garret paused, as if gathering his thoughts, or his courage, then took a deep breath. "I know I've made mistakes," he continued, shaking his head. "But there's still the chance for me to fix them. I shouldn't have walked out that night." His brow creased, a flicker of pain and regret going through his eyes. "Ember, I know you can't feel what I do," he said. "I get that. But ... I want to be with you. And if that's not possible, I'll be content just to be close. Fighting Talon with you and Riley, helping people, saving other dragons from the Order-there is nothing I want more. And nowhere else I want to be. ~ Julie Kagawa

What exactly did you expect me to do? I told The Boss what you said, but he's not going to budge. Nobody gets dental. ~ H.D. Smith

A rising tide of desire threatened to swamp her like a tidal wave, washing away fear and doubt and leaving behind it the knowledge that in her topsy turvy life, she was certain of only one thing: she wanted this man, right now, and she'd deal with the consequences later....
"I want to make love to you," he said, his voice low and thrumming through her veins as if it were a music only she could hear. ~ Deborah Blake

He clenched his teeth and muttered, "I can't get deep enough."
...
Putting her mouth to his ear, she whispered, "Try. ~ Thea Harrison

No surprises" is the motto of the franchise ghetto, its Good Housekeeping seal, subliminally blazoned on every sign and logo that make up the curves and grids of light that outline the Basin. The people of America, who live in the world's most surprising and terrible country, take comfort in that motto. Follow the loglo outward, to where the growth is enfolded into the valleys and the canyons, and you find the land of the refugees. They have fled from the true America, the America of atomic bombs, scalpings, hip-hop, chaos theory, cement overshoes, snake handlers, spree killers, space walks, buffalo jumps, drive-bys, cruise missiles, Sherman's March, gridlock, motorcycle gangs, and bun-gee jumping. They have parallel-parked their bimbo boxes in identical computer-designed Burbclave street patterns and secreted themselves in symmetrical sheetrock shitholes with vinyl floors and ill-fitting woodwork and no sidewalks, vast house farms out in the loglo wilderness, a culture medium for a medium culture. The only ones left in the city are street people, feeding off debris; immigrants, thrown out like shrapnel from the destruction of the Asian powers; young bohos; and the technomedia priesthood of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong. Young smart people like Da5id and Hiro, who take the risk of living in the city because they like stimulation and they know they can handle it. ~ Neal Stephenson

I've been making 16mm urban landscape films about San Francisco for many years. I choose different nonfiction themes to investigate and am generally interested in surfacing lesser-known histories. I like to investigate and illuminate these histories, combining them with my own unconventional storytelling style, which is generally a stream-of-consciousness voiceover involving a steady stream of personal reflections on pining over unavailable women. ~ Jenni Olson

You scared the life out of me."
"Good thing cats have nine lives, then," she teased. ~ Carrie Ann Ryan

It was Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the television series, 1997-2003, not the lackluster movie that preceded it) that blazed the trail for Twilight and the slew of other paranormal romance novels that followed, while also shaping the broader urban fantasy field from the late 1990s onward.

Many of you reading this book will be too young to remember when Buffy debuted, so you'll have to trust us when we say that nothing quite like it had existed before. It was thrillingly new to see a young, gutsy, kick-ass female hero, for starters, and one who was no Amazonian Wonder Woman but recognizably ordinary, fussing about her nails, her shoes, and whether she'd make it to her high school prom. Buffy's story contained a heady mix of many genres (fantasy, horror, science-fiction, romance, detective fiction, high school drama), all of it leavened with tongue-in-cheek humor yet underpinned by the serious care with which the Buffy universe had been crafted. Back then, Whedon's dizzying genre hopping was a radical departure from the norm-whereas today, post-Buffy, no one blinks an eye as writers of urban fantasy leap across genre boundaries with abandon, penning tender romances featuring werewolves and demons, hard-boiled detective novels with fairies, and vampires-in-modern-life sagas that can crop up darn near anywhere: on the horror shelves, the SF shelves, the mystery shelves, the romance shelves. ~ Ellen Datlow

My dad was a different person when he lectured: his eyes sparkled, his lips turned upward ... 'Think what it must have been like for Darwin, two hundred years ago. He took that voyage on the Beagle [1831] expecting to document the natural world and he stumbled across something impossible. A creature who could defy the laws of physics
straight out of the pages of mythology ... In that one moment, the entire landscape of scientific investigation was drastically and irrevocably changed. The impossible became a widespread scientific reality, as omnipresent as gravity and in some cases, nearly as hard to see. ~ Jennifer Lynn Barnes

We want to convey that the modern-day GOP looks like the conservative party that stands on principles. But we want to apply them to urban-suburban hip-hop settings. We need to uptick our image with everyone, including one-armed midgets. ~ Michael Steele

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

This will be much more complex than defeating a pack of flesh-eating zombies. It will take fitnesse. ~ Amanda Carlson

Son, if you were any farther from fine you'd be in Nebraska. ~ Deborah Blake

I intend to make you scream for me, Riley. ~ Keri Arthur

Never be fooled by what you see. It's what you do not see that will kill you. ~ Ash Krafton

Either you're one hell of an actress, or you're the dumbest person to ever walk the face of this planet. ~ Kimberly Spencer

The late-afternoon sky, in Paul's peripheral vision, panoramic and mostly unobstructed, appeared rural or suburban, more indicative of forests and fields and lakes - of nature's vast connections, through the air and the soil, to more of itself - than of outer space, which was mostly what Paul thought of when beneath an urban sky, even in daytime, especially in Manhattan, between certain buildings, framing sunless zones of upper atmosphere, as if inviting space down to deoxygenate a city block. ~ Tao Lin

There are all kinds of pedants around with more time to read and imitate Lynne Truss and John Humphrys than to write poems, love-letters, novels and stories it seems. They whip out their Sharpies and take away and add apostrophes from public signs, shake their heads at prepositions which end sentences and mutter at split infinitives and misspellings, but do they bubble and froth and slobber and cream with joy at language? Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth transport them to giddy euphoric bliss? Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it? Do they use language to seduce, charm, excite, please, affirm and tickle those they talk to? Do they? I doubt it. They're too farting busy sneering at a greengrocer's less than perfect use of the apostrophe. Well sod them to Hades. They think they're guardians of language. They're no more guardians of language than the Kennel Club is the guardian of dogkind. ~ Stephen Fry