Waterfront Quotes

As a planning board commissioner, I have to review the applications for development throughout the city, and the bulk of those applications have been for the waterfront. I think the progress the waterfront has made is amazing. ~ Vincent Frank

Tourists and transients lived in hotels and motels along the waterfront. Behind them a belt of slums lay ten blocks deep, where the darker half of the population lived and died. On the other side of the tracks - the tracks were there - the business section wore its old Spanish facades like icing on a stale cake. ~ Ross Macdonald

You know what's wrong with our waterfront? It's the love of a lousy buck. It's making the love of a buck, the cushy job, more important than the love of man. It's forgetting that every fellow down here's your brother in Christ. ~ Budd Schulberg

The only guy who was at all helpful as a producer was Sam Spiegel with On the Waterfront. He's one of the few who even knows what he's doing. ~ Elia Kazan

Then we'll just stay here."
She laughed. "Forever?"
"Sure," he said. "Seems as good a place to live as any."
"Nice waterfront view."
"Plenty of light."
"A beachfront property. And no cameras."
He nodded. "No cameras."
She reached for his hand, and her fingers were warm against his. "I don't want to loose any more time," (pgs. 256-257) ~ Jennifer E. Smith

What was bizarre, when I was younger, I never watched TV. I would rather watch a movie 100 times than to watch a TV show, just to find another nuance. I can't tell you how many times I've watched 'On the Waterfront', just to find a flaw so that I can learn and try to improve my thing. ~ Vin Diesel

It's a beautiful city, and the waterfront area is fantastic. I haven't had time to visit the theatre, but I find it remarkable that Toronto has the third-largest English-speaking theatre district in the world, after New York and London. I once noticed a fellow sitting on a bench, then I realized it was a statue of Glenn Gould. It's very realistic. ~ Donald Trump

I am not a cosmic orphan. ~ Elia Kazan

This is a love story," Michael Dean says, "but really what isn't? Doesn't the detective love the mystery or the chase, or the nosey female reporter who is even now being held against her wishes at an empty warehouse on the waterfront? Surely, the serial murder loves his victims, and the spy loves his gadgets, or his country or the exotic counterspy. The ice-trucker is torn between his love for ice and truck and the competing chefs go crazy for scallops, and the pawnshop guys adore their junk. Just as the housewives live for catching glimpses of their own botoxed brows in gilded hall mirrors and the rocked out dude on 'roids totally wants to shred the ass of the tramp-tatted girl on hookbook. Because this is reality, they are all in love, madly, truly, with the body-mic clipped to their back-buckle and the producer casually suggesting, "Just one more angle.", "One more jello shot.".

And the robot loves his master. Alien loves his saucer. Superman loves Lois. Lex and Lana. Luke loves Leia, til he finds out she's his sister. And the exorcist loves the demon, even as he leaps out the window with it, in full soulful embrace. As Leo loves Kate, and they both love the sinking ship. And the shark, god the shark, loves to eat. Which is what the Mafioso loves too, eating and money and Pauly and Omertà. The way the cowboy loves his horse, loves the corseted girl behind the piano bar and sometimes loves the other cowboy. As the vampire loves night and neck. And the zombie, do ~ Jess Walter

Don't pack your bags just yet, stay awhile,
Don't try to run away to higher ground,
You're in my twisted clouds of sad misfortune,
And you are such an entertaining crowd!
(I've never had such cheerful toys to play with...)
Forget I said that – just a little natural disaster Humour,
Ha-ha-ha.

Pull up a rusty lawn chair
On the waterfront in New Orleans,
And ignore the wind that howls,
Things aren't always as they seem.
I can smell fear in the air,
Fresh amidst the cornbread steam,
Forgive me if I sound excited,
(I'm going to be famous, you know!)
And let me take your money, please!

I'll drown your family, hunt down your pets,
I've got tricks that I've never even tried yet,
And it's so easy when I get the chance!
(I'll swipe your house in just one glance!)

As the saying goes, it all comes out in the wash,
But I'm the only wash that leaves no stone unturned,
Financial devastation is my middle name,
And social degradation is my third!

You, little boy from the bayou bank,
You used to fish for pointless fun
(I can appreciate having fun),
But after I go, you'll find your parents poor,
You'll have eviction notices on your door,
You'll have to sell any fish you can catch,
In a desperate grasp for money,
Although I hate to break it to you,
That bayou's polluted, honey!
I see nothing in your future ~ Rebecca McNutt

Scholars of the Therin Collegium, from their comfortable position well inland, could tell you that the wolf sharks of the Iron Sea are beautiful and fascinating creatures, their bodies more packed with muscle than any bull, their abrasive hide streaked with every color from old-copper green to stormcloud black. Anyone actually working the waterfront in Camorr and on the nearby coast could tell you that wolf sharks are big aggressive bastards that like to jump. ~ Scott Lynch

My father lost his leg in 1927 playing soccer. A kick broke his leg; gangrene set in. They sawed it off. So he didn't get what a lot of Irish immigrants got, which was a job on the Waterfront - he didn't get that. ~ Pete Hamill

The town of Lunenburg was built on a hill running down to a sheltered harbour. On one of the upper streets stands a Presbyterian church with a huge gilded cod on its weather vane. Along the waterfront, the wooden-shingled houses are brick red, a color that originally came from mixing clay with cod-liver oil to protect the wood against the salt of the waterfront. It is the look of Nova Scotia - brick red wood, dark green pine, charcoal sea. ~ Mark Kurlansky

Changed to the elevated at the South Station, and at about twelve o'clock had climbed down the steps at Battery Street and struck along the old waterfront past Constitution Wharf. I didn't keep track of the cross streets, and can't tell you yet which it was we turned up, but I know it wasn't Greenough Lane. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

There are other special problems connected with the discovery of ancient cities. Alexandria was ravaged by fires and street fighting, and its ancient waterfront is underwater. Some discoveries at Pompeii were not revealed for many decades, because the wall paintings are so pornographic. ~ Norman F. Cantor

I was born in the city's general hospital on November 15, 1930, and we lived at 31 Amherst Avenue in the western suburbs. It was a magical place. There were receptions at the French Club, race meetings at the Shanghai Racecourse, and various patriotic gatherings at the British Embassy on the Bund, the city's glamorous waterfront area. ~ J.G. Ballard

Now, of course, having failed in every attempt to subdue the Glades by frontal attack, we are slowly killing it off by tapping the River of Grass. In the questionable name of progress, the state in its vast wisdom lets every two-bit developer divert the flow into drag-lined canals that give him 'waterfront' lots to sell. As far north as Corkscrew Swamp, virgin stands of ancient bald cypress are dying. All the area north of Copeland had been logged out, and will never come back. As the glades dry, the big fires come with increasing frequency. The ecology is changing with egret colonies dwindling, mullet getting scarce, mangrove dying of new diseases born of dryness. ~ John D. MacDonald

The most realistic blood I've seen is when Marlon Brando gets beat up in On The Waterfront. ~ George A. Romero

As a playwright, you can cover a lot of waterfront without being able to hold your own against an expert in any of those areas. I have no illusions about that. ~ Tom Stoppard

Past the projects, the land opened up and water came into view. The breeze carried rain and salt. Jetties and barrier walls supported the shore, which was stacked with crumbling brick warehouses. Out in the channel, the Statue of Liberty stood alone on her little island, her corroding flame held high in the air as the sun set over the industrial shoreline and skyways of New Jersey. Across the narrows, the bluffs of Staten Island wavered in the smoky light of dusk that turned the Verrazano into bronze. Faint light burnished water into busy with freighters and tug boats. A lone sail boat flitted in the distance. On the near shore, on a slip of water between a jetty and the land, a blood red barge bobbed on the tide. ~ Andrew Cotto

This is the most beautiful place on earth.
There are many such places. Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary. A houseboat in Kashmir, a view down Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, a gray gothic farmhouse two stories high at the end of a red dog road in the Allegheny Mountains, a cabin on the shore of a blue lake in spruce and fir country, a greasy alley near the Hoboken waterfront, or even, possibly, for those of a less demanding sensibility, the world to be seen from a comfortable apartment high in the tender, velvety smog of Manhattan, Chicago, Paris, Tokyo, Rio, or Rome - there's no limit to the human capacity for the homing sentiment. ~ Edward Abbey

He had all the rough and sultry appeal of Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront. Clive Owen in Sin City. Russell Crowe in everything he did. ~ Kristan Higgins

The old frame house down near the waterfront had never held so many people since the day it was put up. It must have been a pleasant place fifty years before: trees overhanging the limpid water, cows grazing in the meadows on both sides of the river, little frame houses like this one dotting the banks here and there.
It wasn't a pleasant place any more: garbage scows, coal yards, the river a greasy gray soup. Dead-end blocks of decrepit tenements on one side of it, lumberyards and ice-plants and tall stacks on the other.
The house was set far back from the street, hemmed in by the blank walls that rose around it.
("I Wouldn't Be In Your Shoes") ~ Cornell Woolrich

Hey, I got an idea, let's go to the movies. I wanna go to the movies, I want to take you all to the movies. Let's go and experience the art of the cinema. Let's begin with the Scream Of Fear, and we're gonna have it haunt us for the rest of our lives. And then let's go see The Great Escape, and spend our summer jumping our bikes, just like Steve McQueen over barb wire. And then let's catch The Seven Samurai for some reason on PBS, and we'll feel like we speak Japanese because we can read the subtitles and hear the language at the same time. And then let's lose sleep the night before we see 2001: A Space Odyssey because we have this idea that it's going to change forever the way we look at films. And then let's go see it four times in one year. And let's see Woodstock three times in one year and let's see Taxi Driver twice in one week. And let's see Close Encounters of the Third Kind just so we can freeze there in mid-popcorn. And when the kids are old enough, let's sit them together on the sofa and screen City Lights and Stage Coach and The Best Years of Our Lives and On The Waterfront and Midnight Cowboy and Five Easy Pieces and The Last Picture Show and Raging Bull and Schindler's List… so that they can understand how the human condition can be captured by this amalgam of light and sound and literature we call the cinema. ~ Tom Hanks

To know Seattle one must know its waterfront. It is a good waterfront, not as busy as New York's, not as self-consciously colorful as San Francisco's, not as exotic as New Orleans, but a good, honest, working waterfront with big gray warehouses and trim fishing boats and docks that smell of creosote, and sea gulls and tugs and seafood restaurants and beer joints and fish stores--a waterfront where you can hear foreign languages and buy shrunken heads and genuine stuffed mermaids, where you can watch the seamen follow the streetwalkers and the shore patrol follow the sailors, where you can stand at an open-air bar and drink clam nectar, or sit on a deadhead and watch the water, or go to an aquarium and look at an octopus. ~ Murray Morgan

Now, there is some concern about the fact that, given we are in the middle of a desert, there is no actual water at the waterfront. And that is a definite drawback, I agree. ~ Joseph Fink

A generous donor (who had no doubt lived a life that imperiled his mortal soul) had granted [the Sisters] more than one hundred waterfront acres. ~ Kristin Hannah

having been jostled by a nautical-looking negro who had come from one of the queer dark courts on the precipitous hillside which formed a short cut from the waterfront to the deceased's home ~ H.P. Lovecraft

And what did you want?"
His eyes sparkled with laughter. "I wanted to find the nearest bar and drink until I forgot a certain orphan with bewitching green eyes. I kept telling myself it was my Mori who wanted you, but the truth was, I noticed you before my demon did, and I wanted to see you again."
Warmth pooled in my stomach. "Would you do it differently now?"
"Yes."
"What would you do?"
"I'd do this."
I squealed as he swung me up over his shoulder and started striding back toward the waterfront. "Nikolas, put me down, you big lug!" I yelled through my laughter.
He patted my backside. "This time my Mori and I are in complete agreement."
"You do know I can zap your warrior ass, right?" I squirmed and he held me tighter.
His deep laugh warmed me to my toes. "But you won't."
"How do you know?"
"Because you like me... a lot. ~ Karen Lynch

Suzanne had a room on a waterfront street in the port of Montreal. Everything happened just as it was put down. She was the wife of a man I knew. Her hospitality was immaculate. Some months later I sang it for Judy Collins over the telephone. The publishing rights were lost in New York City, but it is probably appropriate that I don't own this song. Just the other day I heard some people singing it on a ship in the Caspian Sea. ~ Leonard Cohen

Georgie took out her phone. 'I want to take a picture of you two.' She held up her phone and motioned for us to get together.
Darcy and I lined up against the railing. 'No, I need you closer together to get you both in the photo,' she instructed.
I had taken countless pictures on the waterfront and I knew that if you were getting the skyline in the background, you didn't need to be that close.
Darcy put his arm around my shoulder and we leaned in. I slipped my arm around his waist and I noticed how easily I fit into the little nook on his side.
'Oh, hold on, I'm having problems.' Georgie played with her phone for a few moments while we just stood there in our posed embrace.
'Georgie ... '
She looked up at her brother and blushed. 'Um, I think it works now. ~ Elizabeth Eulberg

In more than 500 instances, from the Gulf of Alaska to Bar Harbor, Maine, FEMA has remapped waterfront properties from the highest-risk flood zone, saving the owners as much as 97 percent on the premiums they pay into the financially strained National Flood Insurance Program. ~ Bill Dedman

Pier 5 in Brooklyn was within a short walking distance from the subway station and in the distance the masts and funnel of my new ship could be seen. The S/S African Sun was a C-4 cargo ship built in 1942, for the war effort. Not even 15 years old, the ship looked as good as new. Farrell Lines took good care of their ships and it showed. There was always a lot of activity prior to departure and this time was no exception. We were expected to depart prior to dusk and there were things to do.
I got into my working uniform and leaving my sea bag on my bunk headed for the bridge. When I passed the open door of the Captain's room he summoned me in. "Welcome aboard Mr. Mate. I've heard good things about you!" We talked briefly about his expectations. Introducing himself as Captain Brian, he seemed friendly enough and I felt that I got off to a good start.
As the ship's Third Officer, most frequently known as the Third Mate, my first order of business was to place my license into the frame alongside those of the other deck officers. I must admit that doing so gave me a certain feeling of pride and belonging. With only an hour to go before our scheduled departure I called the engine room and gave them permission to jack over the engine; a term used to engage the engine, so as to slowly turn the screw or propeller. ~ Hank Bracker

The full moon rose above the harbor as brightly lit tour boats skimmed along the black water, the brilliant cluster of lower Manhattan piled like stacks of coins from a treasure chest in the distance. Up the river, bridges arched across the wide water all the way up the east side, while the Brooklyn side was marked by soft, round lights, like a string of pearls. ~ Andrew Cotto

There are some movies that deserve criticism. They want people to know that it's a great dramatic accomplishment and has some great performances in it. But, c'mon. Yes, you will have some fun if you go see 'Snakes on a Plane.' Snakes are biting people - and they're biting them right on screen. There's nothing to review. It's not 'Snakes on the Waterfront.' You don't have snakes going, 'I coulda been a constrictor.' No. Hell no. It's 'Snakes on a Plane.' ~ Samuel L. Jackson

People who know fresh cod - from the great restaurants of France, to British working-class fish shops, to the St. John's waterfront - all agree on three things: It should be cooked quickly and gently, it should be prepared simply, and, above all, it must be a thick piece. Only a large piece can be properly cooked. ~ Mark Kurlansky

I run in London, in San Francisco - any city that's got a waterfront or park. ~ Danny Meyer