Living In The City Quotes
But I still wonder how it was possible, in those graceless years of transition, long ago, that men did not see whither they were going, and went on, in blindness and cowardice, to their fate. I wonder, for it is hard for me to conceive how men who knew the word "I," could give it up and not know what they lost. But such has been the story, for I have lived in the City of the damned, and I know what horror men permitted to be brought upon them.
Ayn Rand
The people in the city seem paper thin in the mist. They believe they are dancing to the music of their lives... But I think, like the puppets, each of us is pulled upon invisible strings, until the night comes and we are put away. I shiver, and hurry from the square, as the darkness of the city closes over me like canal water or the grave.
Neil Gaiman
The young man walks by himself, fast but not fast enough, far but not far enough (faces slide out of sight, talk trails into tattered scraps, footsteps tap fainter in alleys); he must catch the last subway, the streetcar, the bus, run up the gangplanks of all the steamboats, register at all the hotels, work in the cities, answer the wantads, learn the trades, take up the jobs, live in all the boardinghouses, sleep in all the beds. One bed is not enough, one job is not enough, one life is not...
John Dos Passos
Wherever in this city, screens flickerwith pornography, with science-fiction vampires, victimized hirelings bending to the lash, we also have to walk . . . if simply as we walkthrough the rainsoaked garbage, the tabloid crueltiesof our own neighborhoods. We need to grasp our lives inseperablefrom those rancid dreams, that blurt of metal, those disgraces, and the red begonia perilously flashingfrom a tenement sill six stories high, or the long-legged young girls playing ballin the junior...
Adrienne Rich