Quotes & Sayings About Beautiful Cities

Bonjour to all the beautiful people of Montreal because this is like home to me. We had Sugar Ray Leonard here who changed the globe and took on Roberto Duran right here in Montreal. How did we get to Montreal? Because it's one of the fairest cities in the world. We were looking for a neutral site and we picked Montreal. Sugar Ray Leonard came in and Roberto Duran beat him - because we got our fair shake in Montreal. — Don King

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

What an incredibly beautiful city at night Chicago is. Absolutely beautiful. — Nik Wallenda

Lagos was the ultimate dysfunctional city - but actually, in terms of all the initiatives and ingenuity, it mobilised an incredibly beautiful, almost utopian landscape of independence and agency. — Rem Koolhaas

The beauty of modern cities consists in a sense of their power, cruelty, impersonality, massiveness, + variety (as in New York or London) seen against the architectural vestiges of a beautiful past. — Susan Sontag

The beautiful dream of young love that ventures only on half-measures, that desires and dares not ask, promises and does not give.

He was homeless in the noble sense of those who, like the Vikings and pirates of beauty, have collected in their intellectual raids all that is most precious in many great cities. He was close to all the arts in the manner of a dilettante, but stronger than his love for them was his sublime disdain to serve them.

Destiny does not always need the powerful prelude of a sudden violent blow to shake a heart beyond recovery.

Memory is always a bond and every loving memory is a bond twice over. — Stefan Zweig

Rita Vargas caught her breath - the dark was spilling out of the mountains as the sun vanished in the west. The deep purple/blue shadows spread out on the water of the Caribe. The ocean was shadowy, yet at the same time, glowing. The massif green on one side, and velvety black on the other. And below, the lights of the cities scattered and burned, white, yellow, white, looking like gems. Stars.
She still recalls it as one of the most beautiful sights she'd ever witnessed, as if the coast of Veracruz were somehow welcoming its sons home. It would have astounded the dead if the could have looked out the windows. Why would they ever have left such a beautiful home for the dry bones and spikes of the desert? If they could have seen what she saw, they might have stayed home. — Luis Alberto Urrea

Everything Is Going to Be All Right
How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.
The poems flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right. — Derek Mahon

I see a time when the farmer will not need to live in a lonely cabin on a lonely farm. I see the farmers coming together in groups. I see them with time to read, and time to visit with their fellows. I see them enjoying lectures in beautiful halls, erected in every village. I see them gather like the Saxons of old upon the green at evening to sing and dance. I see cities rising near them with schools, and churches, and concert halls, and theaters. I see a day when the farmer will no longer be a drudge and his wife a bond slave, but happy men and women who will go singing to their pleasant tasks upon their fruitful farms. When the boys and girls will not go west nor to the city; when life will be worth living. In that day the moon will be brighter and the stars more glad, and pleasure and poetry and love of life come back to the man who tills the soil. — Hamlin Garland

In the cities of the European Franks, women roam about exposing not only their faces, but also their brightly shining hair (after their necks, their most attractive feature), their arms, their beautiful throats, and even, if what Ive heard is true, a portion of their gorgeous legs; as a result, the men of those cities walk about with great difficulty, embarrassed and in extreme pain, because, you see, their front sides are always erect and this fact naturally leads to the paralysis of their society. Undoubtedly, this is why each day the Frank infidel surrenders another fortress to us Ottomans. — Orhan Pamuk

Lise: Paris has ways of making people forget. Jerry: Paris? No, not this city. It's too real and too beautiful. It never lets you forget anything. It reaches in and opens you wide, and you stay that way. — Leslie Caron

Sometimes I look a the Moon, and I imagine that those darker spots are caverns, cities, islands, and the places that shine are those where the sea catches the light of the sun like the glass of a mirror ... I would like to tell of war and friendship among the various parts of the body, the arms that do battle with the feet, and the veins that make love with the arteries or the bones with the marrow. All the stories I would like to write persecute me when I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, the little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful'. — Umberto Eco

0 beautiful for patriot dream That sees beyond the years Thine alabaster cities gleam Undimmed by human tears! America! America! God shed his grace on thee, And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea! — Katharine Lee Bates

There's always - somehow a red carpet everywhere. And I think that, you know, it's a fantasyland out here, you know. It's beautiful. It's sunny all the time. You know, there are beautiful people everywhere because you're not allowed to cross the Los Angeles city lines unless you're beautiful or skinny - joking kind of. — Debra Messing

And except on a certain kind of winter evening - six-thirty in the Seventies, say, already dark and bitter with a wind off the river, when I would be walking very fast toward a bus and would look in the bright windows of brownstones and see cooks working in clean kitchens and and imagine women lighting candles on the floor above and beautiful children being bathed on the floor above that - except on nights like those, I never felt poor; I had the feeling that if I needed money I could always get it. — Joan Didion

One day, The road came. The road brought with it beer and cigarettes. The road brought Coca-Cola and disposable razors. The road brought all the wonderful things that we westerners know and hold close. But where did the road go? A few of the younger men decided to find out. They rode a buffalo cart along the road until they came to a town and then a train station. They hid in a bunch of rice sacks and took the train to the city, to the lights, to the jobs. There was this thing called money, with it you could buy stuff. You could gamble, drink, and be merry. After a period of two years, one of the young men returned to the village driving a new car. He showed the villagers all the beautiful things that he had bought. He said that there was work for everyone in the cities. He took another young man and two young women with him. They were pretty in a rural way and very hungry for money. Money was good. They liked it. It was a great adventure. — James A. Newman

The world is a glorious bounty. There is more food than can be eaten if we would limit our numbers to those who can be cherished, there are more beautiful girls than can be dreamed of, more children than we can love, more laughter than can be endured, more wisdom than can be absorbed. Canvas and pigments lie in wait, stone, wood, and metal are ready for sculpture, random noise is latent for symphonies, sites are gravid for cities, institutions lie in the wings ready to solve our most intractable problems, parables of moving power remain unformulated and yet, the world is finally unknowable. — Ian L. McHarg

All cities are mad: but the madness is gallant. All cities are beautiful, but the beauty is grim. — Christopher Morley

In the stories after the war, all the resistance heroes were dashing, sinewy types who could construct machine guns from paperclips. And the Germans either raised their godlike blond heads through open tank hatches to watch broken cities scroll past, or else were psychopathic, sex-crazed torturers of beautiful Jewesses. Where did the boy fit in? He made such a faint presence. It was like being in the room with a feather. But his soul glowed with some fundamental kindness, didn't it? — Anthony Doerr

When you're a professional athlete, you get paid millions of dollars for doing something that's not only fun, but also physical and badass. You have fans: pathetic people without their own lives or hopes or dreams that measure their happiness on your weekly performance (this still boggles my mind, but in the best way possible - however, my role as a fan now is quite detached). You get to travel around to different cities and fuck their most beautiful women. You are given license to do pretty much whatever you want all the time, and are forgiven easily and often instantly when caught doing anything illegal. Professional athletes can literally get away with murder. — A.D. Aliwat

You know what I like about San Francisco? The women are beautiful, fashionable and smart. San Francisco is one of the only cities I like to visit. I love New York and Chicago - I studied there, and L.A. has the same people as New York. — LeRoy Neiman

I always liked to go to Vancouver to shoot, because I think Vancouver's a beautiful city. — Kurt Fuller

Of all cities in the United States I have seen, San Francisco is the most beautiful. — Nikita Khrushchev

Not the most beautiful, or artistic, or intellectual of cities in Italy, Ascoli Piceno is certainly one of the most easy going and affable, good to look at without being awesome. It is energetic and worldly, and it eats well. — Kate Simon

Sugar had grown up in Charleston, South Carolina: possibly the most luscious of the world's garden cities. Behind every wrought-iron gate or exposed-brick wall in the picturesque peninsula blooming between the Ashley and Cooper Rivers lay a sweet-scented treasure trove of camellias, roses, gardenias, magnolias, tea olives, azaleas and jasmine, everywhere, jasmine.
With its lush greenery, opulent vines, sumptuous hedgerows and candy-colored window boxes, it was no wonder the city's native sons and daughters believed it to be the most beautiful place on earth.
In her first years of exile Sugar had tried to cultivate a reminder of the luxuriant garden delights she had left behind, struggling in sometimes hostile elements to train reluctant honeysuckle and sulky sweet potato vines or nurture creeping jenny and autumn stonecrop. — Sarah-Kate Lynch

We often judge cities by great public buildings. But we admire great cities because people live there in a beautiful way. You have to think about how each person will live there; you can't just think about abstract ideas. — Daniel Libeskind

Perhaps after all the most breathtaking quality about San Francisco is these unexpected glimpses that you are always getting of beautiful hill-heights and beautiful valley-depths ... City lights, like nests of diamonds, glitter and glisten in the depths of those valleys. — Inez Haynes Irwin

Look, I understand that for a lot of people, the US is superior to their country of residence in myriad ways, but I'm Australian. We have it all: the weather, the beautiful cities, the brand of football that involves neither padding yourself up like Santa Claus nor standing in a line in front of goal and covering your testicles. — Max Barry

I shuddered at the thought of what I would do for her if she asked - kill, steal, desecrate the holy god Ambi, destroy cities and masses of people just at her command. — Kenya Wright

Beirut is the Elizabeth Taylor of cities: insane, beautiful, falling apart, aging, and forever drama laden.She'll also marry any infatuated suitor who promises to make her life more comfortable, no matter how inappropriate he is. (p.88) — Rabih Alameddine

Our memories are like a city: we tear some structures down, and we use rubble of the old to raise up new ones. Some memories are bright glass, blindingly beautiful when they catch the sun, but then there are the darker days, when they reflect only the crumbling walls of their derelict neighbours. Some memories are buried under years of patient construction; their echoing halls may never again be seen or walked down, but still they are the foundations for everything that stands above them.

"Glas told me once that that's what people are, mostly: memories, the memories in their own heads, and the memories of them in other people's. And if memories are like a city, and we are our memories, then we are like cities too. I've always taken comfort in that. — Tom Pollock

I really love this city. It's so very beautiful. It's so multidimensional.People say it has a darkness and a decadence, which it tries to hide; they say it's full of the pretentious and opulent trying to strangle the dark reality. But that's true for most of the other great cities too ...
There is a soul here ... and that soul is as pure as the heat of the sun that shines down on it and the rain that falls to purify it. — Umair Naeem

The morrow was a bright September morn; The earth was beautiful as if newborn; There was nameless splendor everywhere, That wild exhilaration in the air, Which makes the passers in the city street Congratulate each other as they meet. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

People are like cities: We all have alleys and gardens and secret rooftops and places where daisies sprout between the sidewalk cracks, but most of the time all we let each other see is is a postcard glimpse of a skyline or a polished square. Love lets you find those hidden places in another person, even the ones they didn't know were there, even the ones they wouldn't have thought to call beautiful themselves. — Hilary T. Smith

[On Paris:] I do not know any city so beautiful and you can be unhappy there and notice your unhappiness less, having the city to look at. — Martha Gellhorn

A woman is beautiful when she stands out as an individual - it's a woman who has her own style and the confidence to pull it off. Half the women on the streets in New York City achieve this. I get so inspired every time I'm there. — Christina Hendricks

I have a place in Chicago and I get there as much as I can ... The city is so unbelievably beautiful. It's one of the greatest cities on the planet. My heart beats differently when I'm in Chicago. It slows down and I feel more at ease. — Jeremy Piven

City planning finds its validation in the intuitive recognition that a burgeoning market society can not be trusted to produce spontaneously a habitable, sanitary, or even efficient city, much less a beautiful one. — Murray Bookchin

I like Bergen County because it's nice and quiet. It's beautiful, and I can get to the city way quick. — Wyclef Jean

I love Salt Lake City. well. It's beautiful with all the great outdoors around you. — Peter Sagal

Chicago is great! It's like the heart of America. It's the center and it's a beautiful city. — Michael Sucsy

The City's going to be very very beautiful! Its going to be like a beautiful beautiful park in some places, and there in the lower level where the river flows right through the City there's going to be these beautiful trees growing on both sides, fruit trees with 12 different kinds of fruit, a different kind every month, think of that!-And leaves that'll be able to heal the people outside the City that are still sin-sick, and sick of their disobediences and their rebellion against God. We're going to be able to take those leaves outside and heal them! — David Berg

THESE ARE BEAUTIFUL PROPERTIES with basketball courts, bathroom facilities, toilet facilities. Many young people would love to get the hell out of cities — Carl Paladino

Barcelona is one of the best cities in the world. I love it there. I love Big Sur. It's stunning and you get a therapeutic experience there. The drive up the coast is one of the most beautiful I've ever done. Also, Hong Kong. I could easily live there! — Meghan Markle

After watching Watford against Manchester City last night
that was like a bubblebath. It was beautiful. — Eamon

What the novel portrays is basically the reality of Vienna today: one of the world's great cities robbed of its lifeblood, reduced to a bland provincial capital filled with beautiful old buildings. — Tom Reiss

You know," said Al in a daze of hunger and cold, "when you see this, you realize that despite all the crap that goes on in the cities, despite all the words and accusations, the country has balance and momentum. The whole thing is symmetrical and beautiful; it works. The cities are like bulbs on a Christmas tree. They may bum, swell, and shatter, but the green stays green. Look at it," he said, eyes fixed on the horizon, not unmoved by the motion of the train. "Look at it. It's alive. — Mark Helprin

My focus is not merely a beautiful city, but a city that's made beautiful on the parameters of good health and cleanliness — Narendra Modi

In a city [world] as dirty as this, You gather up, save, and show me Purely beautiful things. — Ayumi Hamasaki

Working in Tokyo has convinced me that, contrary to what people think, it is actually one of the world's most beautiful cities. — Tadao Ando

Things which are not" are indeed mightier than "things that are". In all ages men have fought most desperately for beautiful cities yet to be built and gardens yet to be planted. — Eric Hoffer

Amaranta would sigh, laugh, and dream of a second homeland of handsome men and beautiful women who spoke a childlike language, with ancient cities of whose past grandeur only the cats among the rubble remained. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Architects have to become designers of eco-systems. Not just designers of beautiful facades or beautiful sculptures, but systems of economy and ecology, where we channel the flow not only of people, but also the flow of resources through our cities and buildings. — Bjarke Ingels

Without the fog, London would not be a beautiful city. It is fog that gives it its magnificent amplitude ... its regular and massive blocks become grandiose in that mysterious mantle. — Claude Monet

The best way to remember a beautiful city or a beautiful painting is to eat something while you are looking at it. The flavor really helps the image to penetrate the body. It fixes it as lacquer does a drawing. — Anais Nin

In a city like London, the fact that cultures live together and cross-fertilize is a beautiful and natural thing. The many cultures in Amsterdam contribute to the city's high level of craziness - something which every interesting city should offer. But sometimes immigrants can live in parallel worlds which can exclude others and not be very attractive. — Charles Landry

I've spent my life capturing beautiful images. And whether in wilderness or in the downtown of a giant city, I find connections, universal rhythms, patterns and beauty that I recognize as a part of me, a part of all of us that celebrates life. It's my great pleasure to share with you that energy which inspires me; this great visual beauty of our world. — Louis Schwartzberg

Soon enough his head would be swimming with tales of derring-do and high adventure, tales of beautiful maidens kissed, of evildoers shot with pistols or fought with swords, of bags of gold, of diamonds as big as the tip of your thumb, of lost cities and of vast mountains, of steam-trains and clipper ships, of pampas, oceans, deserts, tundra. — Neil Gaiman

A place like Sound City, which was just a big, beautiful room where you would hit record and capture the sound of the performer - a place like that isn't necessarily in demand anymore. — Dave Grohl

All cities are impressive in their way, because they represent the aspiration of men to lead a common life; those people who wish to live agreeable lives, and in constant intercourse with one another, will build a city as beautiful as Paris. — Peter Ackroyd

There are almost no beautiful cities in America, though there are many beautiful parts of cities, and some sections that are glorious without being beautiful, like downtown Chicago. Cities are too big and too rich for beauty; they have outgrown themselves too many times. — Noel Perrin

A large number of houses deserve to be burnt, most modern furniture, an overwhelming majority of pictures and books - one might go on for some time with the list. If our community was collectively anything more than a feeble idiot, it would burn most of London and Chicago, for example, an build sane and beautiful cities in the place of these pestilential heaps of private property. — H.G.Wells

Us comics guys tend to get really good at the things we draw a lot. I'm good at creepy old forests, Victorian houses, underground goblin cities, and beautiful but creepy fairies. — Ted Naifeh

For every man is a magnet, highly and singularly sensitized. Some draw to them fields and woods and hills, and are drawn in return; and some draw swift streets and the riches which are known to cities. It is not of importance what we draw, but that we really draw. And the greatest tragedy in life, as I see it, is that thousands of men and women never have the opportunity to draw with freedom; but they exist in weariness and labour, and are drawn upon like inanimate objects by those who live in unhappy idleness. They do not farm: they are farmed. But that is a question foreign to present considerations. We may be assured, if we draw freely, like the magnet of steel which gathers its iron filings about it in beautiful and symmetrical forms, that the things which we attract will also become symmetrical and harmonious with our lives. — Anonymous

Canada is great. It's one of the most beautiful cities and I'm definitely going to miss it a lot. — Taylor Lautner

There are many beautiful and resource-rich areas all over the Philippines that are still undeveloped or under-developed. These areas offer opportunities for better master-planning and the emergence of better communities as well as cities. — Andrew Tan

Were modern cities only beautiful after darkness hid everything but their lights? — Helen McCloy

Nothing lasts forever. But - especially as it seems to me cities and humans are symbiotically and inextricably bound at this point - I hope cities have a good, long run. Plus, cities are beautiful creatures in their own right; and as with us, their vulnerability and ephemerality are part of that beauty. — Alex Shakar

A beautiful literary collection that tells of today's country doctor, somewhat removed from our romantic black-bag image of days gone by, but still fulfilling an essential need in caring for spread-out populations. At times, with today's advances in technology, medicine in rural America looks very like it does in America's cities, but the variety of practices is enormous. The Country Doctor Revisited captures the trials and tribulations of medicine, but also the satisfaction and the extraordinary rewards that come to those who embrace such a practice. — Abraham Verghese

It is convenient for the old men to blame Eve. To insist we are damned because a country girl talked to the snake one afternoon long ago. Children must starve in Somalia for that, and old women be abandoned in our greatest cities. It's why we will finally be thrown into the lakes of molten lead. Because she was confused by happiness that first time anyone said she was beautiful. Nevertheless, she must be the issue, so people won't notice that rocks and galaxies, mathematics and rust are also created in His image. — Jack Gilbert

We discovered, like infants opening their eyes for the first time, that God's coming upon earth out of love for us had radically changed the world, because he had remained with us. As we walked about the city, or traveled to different cities and countries, it was not the beautiful and interesting things around us that attracted us. Not even Rome's wonderful monuments and precious relics seemed so important. Rather, what gave a sense of continuity to our journeying through the world for Jesus, was His Eucharistic presence in the tabernacles we found wherever we went. — Chiara Lubich

The Gypsy Heart tour is a dream come true. Not only because of all the beautiful cities I will get to visit, but all of the beautiful people I will get to meet. Gypsy Heart is not just a tour for me, but a mission to spread love. — Miley Cyrus

When I picture England, I picture little gardens and beautiful yards. I don't really like cities; I like to go and see things like that. — Brittany Howard

But what made him still more fortunate, as he said himself, was having a daughter of such exceeding beauty, rare intelligence, gracefulness, and virtue, that everyone who knew her and beheld her marvelled at the extraordinary gifts with which heaven and nature had endowed her. As a child she was beautiful, she continued to grow in beauty, and at the age of sixteen she was most lovely. The fame of her beauty began to spread abroad through all the villages around - but why do I say the villages around, merely, when it spread to distant cities, and even made its way into the halls of royalty and reached the ears of people of every class, who came from all sides to see her as if to see something rare and curious, or some wonder-working image? — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

You've always lived here, right?" Sarah asked.
"Except for the years I went to college."
"Didn't you ever want to move away? To experience something new?"
"Like bistros?"
She nudged him playfully with her elbow. "No, not just that. Cities have a vibrancy, a sense of excitement that you can't find in a small town."
"I don't doubt it. But to be honest, I've never been interested in things like that. I don't need those things to make me happy. A nice quiet place to unwind at the end of the day, beautiful views, a few good friends. What else is there? — Nicholas Sparks

If you're crossing an ocean for NSConference, there's a good chance you're stopping in Amsterdam. Come a week early and check out Mdevcon. It's a great scene, and the perfect warmup, but it's also worth it just to see the most beautiful venue in the most livable city in the world. You can even attend some Appsterdam events while you're in town. ;) — Mike Lee

I fell in love with my country - its rivers, prairies, forests, mountains, cities and people. No one can take my love of country away from me! I felt then, as I do now, it's a rich, fertile, beautiful land, capable of satisfying all the needs of its people. It could be a paradise on earth if it belonged to the people, not to a small owning class. — Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

Beautiful cities have a treacherous nature. — Pat Conroy

London is one of the most fascinating, historic, amazing cities in the world! — Sophie Kinsella

These days I live in a magical little village on Dartmoor in Devon, England, and my "special spot" is a moss-covered rock in a circle of trees in the woods behind my house.
I often go into the woods, or walk through the fields and hills nearby, when I need inspiration, or to work out a plot problem, or come up with an idea. I think better on my feet, particularly when there is beautiful countryside around me and a dog at my side.
When I was younger and lived in big cities, I had special places there too. There's magic everywhere, if you look. — Terri Windling

I am growing to love DC.This [Washington] is a beautiful city. I think every citizen should come see their capital. A lot of the museums are free, there are restaurants that are reasonably priced. — Sonia Sotomayor

Your machinery is beautiful. Your society people have apologized to me for the envious ridicule with which your newspapers have referred to me. Your newspapers are comic but never amusing. Your Water Tower is a castellated monstrosity with pepperboxes stuck all over it. I am amazed that any people could so abuse Gothic art and make a structure not like a water tower but like a tower of a medieval castle. It should be torn down. It is a shame to spend so much money on buildings with such an unsatisfactory result. Your city looks positively dreary. — Oscar Wilde

Simplicity in its essence demands neither a vow of poverty nor a life of rural homesteading. As an ethic of self-conscious material moderation, it can be practiced in cities and suburbs, townhouses and condominiums. It requires neither a log cabin nor a hairshirt but a deliberate ordering of priorities so as to distinguish between the necessary and superfluous, useful and wasteful, beautiful and vulgar. — David Shi

Cities are beautiful because they are created slowly; they are made by time. A city is born from a tangle of monuments and infrastructures , culture and market, national history and everyday stories. It takes 500 years to create a city, 50 to create a neighborhood. — Renzo Piano

I think it's wonderful to be here. And what a beautiful city you have here. — Woody Harrelson

Listen, she said, "cherubim have come to my planet before."
"I know that. Where do you think I got my information?"
"What do you know about us?"
"I have heard that your host planet is shadowed, that it is troubled."
"It is beautiful," Meg said defensively.
She felt a rippling of his wings. "In the middle of your cities?"
"Well-no-but I don't live in a city."
"And is your planet peaceful?"
"Well-no-it isn't very peaceful."
"I had the idea," Proginoskes moved reluctantly within her mind, "that there are wars on your planet. People fighting and killing each other."
"Yes, that's so, but-"
"And children go hungry."
"Yes."
"And people don't understand each other."
"Not always."
"And there's-there's hate?"
"Yes."
She felt Proginoskes pulling away. "All I want to do," he was murmuring to himself, "is go some place quiet and recite the names of the stars... — Madeleine L'Engle

Households, cities, countries, and nations have enjoyed great happiness when a single individual has taken heed of the Good and Beautiful. Such people not only liberate themselves; they fill those they meet with a free mind. — Philo

Penny knew also she loved the country for its beauty. Cities could be magnificent, astounding, fantastic, but they were not consistently beautiful and simple. Penny liked uncomplicated beauty. — Dorothy Deming

Portland and Seattle and Vancouver, they were beautiful cities, with their own positive qualities . . . but what they weren't was infinitely capable of expansion. There were protected wetlands and forests to every side, mountain microclimates and endangered species under the protection of the federal government. The Pacific Northwest was already full, sorry, and it wasn't looking to double its population any time soon. — Anonymous

She was silent; the great wings almost stopped moving; only a delicate stirring seemed to keep them aloft. "Listen, then," Mrs. Whatsit said. The resonant voice rose and the words seemed to be all around them so that Meg felt that she could almost reach out and touch them:
"Sing unto the Lord a new song, and His praise from the end of the earth, ye that go down to the sea, and all that there is therein; the isles, and the inhabitants thereof. Let the wilderness and the cities thereof lift their voice; let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout from the top of the mountains. Let them give glory unto the Lord! — Madeleine L'Engle

Before them is the most beautiful city she has ever seen, has ever imagined. Golden rooftops shine brightly; windows made from diamonds and rubies gleam; tall buildings reach toward the clouds. She is again overwhelmed, this time with gratitude.
All this, for her. — Victoria Kahler

Pittsburgh. I'd been there. One of the most underrated cities in North America. People who'd never been there thought of it as a graveyard of abandoned steel mills, but it was a beautiful city, and it would be good to have it back. — Steven Brust