Big City Quotes & Sayings

My music is the essence of Detroit. At one time, we were the center of the world, man - Motor City. — Big Sean

In New York City, the meek don't inherit the earth. The big mouth does. — Barbara Corcoran

He'd never played in Wrigley Field - the Cubs had still been out at old West Side Grounds when he came through as a catcher for the Cardinals before the First World War. But seeing the ballpark in ruins brought the reality of this war home to him like a kick in the teeth. Sometimes big things would do that, sometimes little ones; he remembered a doughboy breaking down and sobbing like a baby when he found some French kid's dolly with its head blown off. Muldoon's eyes slid over toward Wrigley for a moment. "Gonna be a long time before the Cubs win another pennant," he said, as good an epitaph as any for the park - and the city. — Harry Turtledove

I know you told me you'd wait for me, but I don't want either of us to wait anymore. Especially when I knew from the first moment I saw you that you were special. I feel like I've been running my whole life, speeding from small town into a big city, jumping from one place to the next for years until they all blurred together. And right when I decided it was time to finally stop running and set down some roots, there you were. My new beginning." Her eyes filled with tears as she smiled up at him and slid her arms around his neck to pull him closer. "My love."
Jack sank down onto the couch with Mary, her curves soft beneath his muscles. "I'll always be yours, Angel. Forever. — Bella Andre

Fortunately, I had cousins who lived in Buffalo and would often go to visit them, which I loved to do because I liked Buffalo as it was a big city. Even today, the bigger the city, the better. — Paul Smith

We cannot experimentally map out the brain. It's just too big. In a piece of the brain the size of a pinhead there are 3,000 pathways like a city with 3,000 streets. — Henry Markram

I think life is delicious, and I want to gobble it up in big bites, eating, drinking, reading, talking, traveling - everything. I want everything. I'm hungry for everything, all the time. Bookstores make me ravenous, as do city streets and airports and glossy fashion magazines. So much to see, taste, touch, try, do. I can feel myself come to life, eyes open, taking everything in, fingers running over textures, ears pricked for sounds. I feel life is so genuinely interesting, that there's so much to be tasted and tried and discovered. — Shauna Niequist

My dear Princess, if you could creep unseen about your City, peeping at will through the curtain-shielded windows, you would come to think that all the world was little else than a big nursery full of crying children with none to comfort them. The doll is broken: no longer it sweetly sqeaks in answer to our pressure, "I love you, kiss me." The drum lies silent with the drumstick inside, no longer do we make a brave noise in the nursery. The box of tea-things we have clumsily put out foot upon; there will be no more merry parties around the three-legged stool. The tin trumpet will not play the note we want to sound; the wooden bricks keep falling down; the toy has exploded and burnt our fingers. Never mind, little man, little woman, we will try and mend things to-morrow — Jerome K. Jerome

I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit. I didn't think anything of what he had done to the city's name. Later I heard men who could manage their r's give it the same pronunciation. I still didn't see anything in it but the meaningless sort of humor that used to make richardsnary the thieves' word for dictionary. A few years later I went to Personville and learned better. — Dashiell Hammett

Don't talk." Alec gestured at him with an expression of vague disgust.
"Every time I look at you, I keep remembering coming in here and seeing you draped all over my sister."
Jace sat up.
"I didn't hear about this."
"Oh, come on -" said Simon.
"Simon, you're blushing," observed Jace.
"And you're a vampire and almost never blush, so this better be really juicy. And weird. Were bicycles involved in some kinky way? Vaccum cleaners? Umbrellas?"
"Big umbrellas, or the little kind you get with drinks?" Alec asked.
"Does it matter - — Cassandra Clare

A chrome spiral staircase connects the main floor to the upper one. It reminds Prospect of a big strand of DNA. Once he's out of the shower, he feels new. He opens a window. The gentle hush of traffic is surprisingly soothing. It is like putting a seashell to his ear, but instead of hearing an ocean, he hears a city and all its voices. — Dwight Okita

What do you do when you find yourself out in a lie - even a white one? Well, one thing for sure, you don't put on black, you don't mourn and beat out a staccato mea culpa on your breast. You go! Get the hell out! Take a chance! Forget you're an American, living in the suburbs of success, hoping to move into the big city ... You go! — Vincent Price

In every big city there is always one surefire laugh, and that lies in hanging some piece of idiocy upon the people of a nearby city or town. — W.C. Fields

When my trust fund ran out, I panicked. I have a lot of admiration for the kids who come to the big city with nothing and make it. — James St. James

Going to New York to do whatever - show business - it just seemed fun. It seemed fun to go to the big city and meet all kinds of different people and maybe be famous. It was just exciting. So I wasn't scared. — January Jones

Marathon Day in Boston and all of Massachusetts, it's Patriot's Day, and it's a big celebration for us. It's a day when we're kind of the whole world's city there. — Elizabeth Warren

I have 15 years of executive experience as a big-city mayor and as a governor. — Martin O'Malley

Cops just surrounding me with pistols everywhere.
They put me in the backseat of their car handcuffed,
Pushed out them chests like they're big rough and tough.
A cop come and said 'You'll never sell your guns now.'
I said 'It doesn't matter, you'll sell them anyhow.
You take the guns from me, you sell them for a fee;
Anyway you put it, they'll get in the city!' — KRS-One

how does a big city worm end up surfing the big waves in hawaii. — Ricky Mickiewicz

Every person on the streets of New York is a type. The city is one big theater where everyone is on display. — Jerry Rubin

10. Calories count in New York City. The Big Apple recently adopted a law that requires fast-food restaurants with at least fifteen outlets in the city to post, in prominent places, the calories of each of their food items so that customers can make informed choices. — Richard H. Thaler

Being born in New York City, tends to lead to big expectations, expectations that I only started to realize after I had left. — Joseph Pisani

It was actually a lot more helpful to have Calvin Hart, a cop, as my template. He was also my technical advisor on Shaft. This time, I kinda got to go to Jersey City with him, and hang around, and watch him interact with other cops, people in the projects, and see what it means to be him. People call him 'Big Daddy' and he's this larger-than-life hero to a lot of people. — Samuel L. Jackson

If Portland can truly have a true comics show that doesn't become a media show but retains its focus on comics, I think it's going to serve the city well. If this becomes a big show, it's going to bring in a lot of money for the city. — Greg Rucka

4. You've had enough of the big city and decide to return home. Waiting for a bus, you pick up a discarded copy of Larva and, because you have a long bus-ride ahead of you, begin reading. You quickly discover it is not a conventional novel. Do you:
(a) discard it and stare out the window all the way back home?
(b) — Steven Moore

I always think that in a big city, anything is possible, including reinventing yourself. — Caroline Leavitt

Real big pretty titty, shut down every city. If you want the kit kitty, gotta get the key from me, all new everything, plus pay the rent for me. If we in the woods then these niggas pitch a tent for me. — Nicki Minaj

Chicago does not go to the world, the world comes to Chicago! Who needs New York? Who has taller buildings than our tall buildings? Who's got a busier airport than our airport? You want Picasso? We got Picasso, big Picasso. Nobody can make heads or tails of it. It's a lion? No, a seahorse. Looks to me like a radiator with wings. Who gives a damn, people, a Picasso's a Picasso. — Peter Orner

I saw what I could [in Mexico City], but we rarely got anything other than big, mainstream American films. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Even if I live not in a big city, even if I detest to go to parties, I love street fairs and long conversations with people in the countryside. — Paulo Coelho

He wanted his articles to be, not infinite exactly, but big enough to suggest infinitude. — Garth Risk Hallberg

If you are in a big city or on an online dating site, you are flooded with options. Seeing all these options, like the people in the job example, are we now comparing our potential partners not to other potential partners but rather to an idealized person whom no one could measure up to? — Aziz Ansari

A little tranquil lake is more significant to my life than any big city in the world — Munia Khan

New Orleans is like a big musical gumbo. The sound I have is from being in the city my whole life. — Trombone Shorty

Common mental illness and unusual occupations aside, the tenants of Lingering Arms seem as typical as any residents of any building in any big city. And if you listened to their stories, you would find out that they do have many of the same difficulties, desires, and dreams as your average American . . . . . . And yet some the occupants of Lingering Arms will prove to be anything but average. — Aiden Bates

Sometimes we're the big game in town. Other times, we're kind of a side show.
(on Manchester City) — Claudio Reyna

The ever increasing spiritual damage caused by life within the big city will make this hunger practically uncontrollable when we build here on this the landscape of our homeland we must be clear that we will protect its beauty. — Fritz Todt

The key to the city of Florence was about two feet long, and painted a garish gold.
Hamilton was fascinated by it. "Wow! How big is the lock?"
Jonah laughed. "There is no lock, cuz. It's an honorary gig. Back in my crib in LA, I've got a whole shed full of keys from different cities. Want to know the kicker? I can't get at them. The gardener lost the key to the shed. — Gordon Korman

I won't usually make plans with people I don't know on Fridays because all I want to do is stick my hair in a ponytail and put on a big sweater, some tights and a pair of sneakers after a week working in the city. — Bobbi Brown

Well, I've always been interested in approaching a big city in a train, and I can't exactly describe the sensations, but they're entirely human and perhaps have nothing to do with aesthetics. — Edward Hopper

The third big war will begin when the big city is burning — Nostradamus

I'm also a sucker for a view. Take me to a high place where I can see the landscape or the stars or the whole city, and I'm putty, I'm melting in your arms. Then I think having a romantic night, getting a little dressed up, but don't kill yourself trying to force the romance. A bunch of little subtle changes that will make the day more special will amount to a big awesome day in your memory. I like little breadcrumbs along the way. Draw it out! — Evan Rachel Wood

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

ANYWHERE COULD BE SOMEWHERE I might have come from the high country, or maybe the low country, I don't recall which. I might have come from the city, but what city in what country is beyond me. I might have come from the outskirts of a city from which others have come or maybe a city from which only I have come. Who's to know? Who's to decide if it rained or the sun was out? Who's to remember? They say things are happening at the border, but nobody knows which border. They talk of a hotel there, where it doesn't matter if you forgot your suitcase, another will be waiting, big enough, and just for you. — Mark Strand

My sense, although I don't remember discussing it with anyone, was that with the fall of France to the Nazis in June 1940, European civilization had collapsed. I also recalled that although both George Herbert Mead and John Dewey had been born in New England, they developed their distinctively American philosophy of pragmatism in Chicago. So thinking of my own New England roots, I decided to go to Chicago, which, seen through Carl Sandburg's eyes, was the opposite of European decadence: Hog Butcher for the World, Tool maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler, Stormy, husky, brawling. City of the Big Shoulders.7 — Grace Lee Boggs

In Brussels, you are able to have a lot of appointments in a day. In Paris, you can have one, two, maybe three, but you spend all your time on the road, in the car or in the suburbs. In Brussels, everything is easy. It's not a very big city, and the people are very quiet and warm. — Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt

1429 was a whole year long, and Paris is a big city. When in 1429, and where in Paris are two very big questions on a long list of big questions that we don't know the answers to." Funny, for a second there, I actually sounded rational and careful. As if leaping head-first into bad plans wasn't my specialty. Ringo — April White

Novelists liked to imagine the interconnectedness of things - as though all the people in the big city were part of some great organism, their lives intertwined. He — Edward Rutherfurd

The M42 bus won the Golden Snail award for being the city's slowest, clocking just 3.6 mph in weekday traffic along 42 St. Even more embarrassing, the M42 lost a race against a kid's big wheel bike — Jeffrey Tanenhaus

To succeed in big-city politics requires a powerful, motivating vision of a better world, a plan to get there, a willingness to meet constituents on their terms, and a tough political skin. — Michael Nutter

THIS IS THE CITY, BOY, said Death. WHAT DO YOU THINK? "It's very big," said Mort, uncertainly. "I mean, why does everyone want to live all squeezed together like this?" Death shrugged. I LIKE IT, he said. IT'S FULL OF LIFE. — Anonymous

The story that I wanna tell is pretty much about the way I grew up. Being bi-racial, growing up in a big city and being an artist. — Lenny Kravitz

Vance took the news of their "big-city fellows" status better than Philip. Probably because it turned out that he was actually gay.
"You're what?"
"Well, I'm not entirely sure," said Vance, "but I'd say it's seventy-thirty for it."
"But I've seen you with women."
"That would be the thirty part of the equation," said Vance as he sipped his coffee.
"Oh my God. That's why you agreed to do this with me. You think I'm gay, too!"
Vance chuckled. "Dude you're not gay."
"I know I'm not, but do you know I'm not?"
"I'd say ninety-two-eight on the straight side," said Vance.
"How the hell-"
"They've made some terrific advances in gaydar, dude. — A. Lee Martinez

The big top deflating symbolized death. The end of another round of shows. The last part of the life of this big top. The same big top would be reborn in another city. It would rise into the air, like the phoenix, but it would never be like this tent, with its backdrop and its smells and its winds. — Sarah Noffke

Well, this is how I feel: I want to live by the ocean but also in the forest but also in the mountains but also in a big city but also in the countryside. Do you understand me? — Anonymous

There were eleven publishers in New York City, and when it was all over, I think it went down to four or five, and then finally just the three of them, the Big Three. — Dan DeCarlo

Some mothers see their job as preparing their kids to live in the big old world. To be independent, to marry and have children of their own. To live wherever they choose and do what makes them happy. That's love. Others, and we all see them, cling to their children. Move to the same city, the same neighborhood. Live through them. Stifle them. Manipulate, use guilt-trips, cripple them.' 'Cripple them? How?' 'By not teaching them to be independent. — Louise Penny

Harlem sleeps late. — Jacob M. Appel

I use the setting of a small rural Norwegian community - the kind of place that I know so intimately. I could never write a novel set in a big city, because, frankly, I don't know what it would be like. — Karin Fossum

And Seattle isn't really crazy anymore. It's a big dot-com city. — Krist Novoselic

The big weekend rush is on. The big city emptying itself out at once. Just a skeleton crew left to keep it going until Monday morning. Everybody getting out - everybody but me, everybody but those who are coming here for me tonight. We're going to have the whole damned town to ourselves.
("New York Blues") — Cornell Woolrich

worked in New York my whole life - actually lived only about twenty blocks away - and had never even heard of this place, or the Freedom Tunnel, for that matter. This city never failed to surprise. Hamster got out of the car, his big eyes blinking through the tangled gray mop of his hair as he looked around. We listened to the cooing of pigeons nesting in the crevices of the raised roadbed above as we waited. — James Patterson

My favorite Starbucks is nice - Omaha Starbucks stores tend to be friendlier than big-city ones, and the baristas are especially lovely at mine - but it's still a Starbucks. — Rainbow Rowell

The girl didn't notice that her boyfriend's head had transformed into a big microphone. So when she whispered her secrets into his ear, her words echoed trough the city. In her embarrassment, she ran out of the house to hide somewhere. And what she saw scared her: couples with microphone heads walked the streets hand in hand. What a sad new world this was, where everybody had to learn how to hold back from saying things.
Sounds of slammed doors echoued through the city. Apart from this, there was only silence. — Zoltan Komor

I guess I just always had this idea that I would go to Hollywood. I had the typical 'get up and go' attitude that you have to have in order to make the brave step into the big city. — Felicia Day

48-point type, a letter size that big-city newspapers probably reserve for special occasions such as Armageddon. Out here in the heartland, we are not waiting that long. Our local paper's stance on the great big headline letters is: You got 'em, you use 'em. — Barbara Kingsolver

Isabelle waved a hand. "No need to worry, big brother. Nothing happened. Of course," she added as Alex's shoulders relaxed, "I was totally passed-out drunk, so he could really have done whatever he wanted and I wouldn't have woken up."
"Oh, please," said Simon. "All I did was tell you the entire plot of Star Wars."
"I don't think I remember that," said Isabelle, taking a cookie from the plate on the table.
"Oh, yeah? Who was Luke Skywalker's best childhood friend?"
"Biggs Darklighter," Isabelle said immediately, and then hit the table with the flat of her hand."That is so cheating! — Cassandra Clare

Finally, power-law distributions have "thick tails," meaning that they have a nonnegligible number of extreme values. You will never meet a 20-foot man, or see a car driving down the freeway at 500 miles per hour. But you could conceivably come across a city of 14 million, or a book that was on the bestseller list for 10 years, or a moon crater big enough to see from the earth with the naked eye - or a war that killed 55 million people. — Steven Pinker

Paris is a city that might well be spoken of in the plural, as the Greeks used to speak of Athens, for there are many Parises, and the tourists' Paris is only superficially related to the Paris of the Parisians. The foreigner driving through Paris from one museum to another is quite oblivious to the presence of a world he brushes past without seeing. Until you have wasted time in a city, you cannot pretend to know it well. The soul of a big city is not to be grasped so easily; in order to make contact with it, you have to have been bored, you have to have suffered a bit in those places that contain it. Anyone can get hold of a guide and tick off all the monuments, but within the very confines of of Paris there is another city as difficult to access as Timbuktu once was. — Julien Green

Loneliness, I think, has very little to do with location. It's a state of mind. In the center of every big, bustling city are some of the loneliest people in the world. — Chris Hadfield

We lay side by side on the extension roof, hands behind our heads, elbows just touching. My head was still spinning a little, not unpleasantly, from the dancing and the wine. The breeze was warm across my face, and even through the city lights I could see constellations: the Big Dipper, Orion's Belt. The pine tree at the bottom of the garden rustled like the sea, ceaselessly. For a moment I felt as if the universe had turned upside down and we were falling softly into an enormous black bowl of stars and nocturne, and I knew, beyond any doubt, that everything was going to be all right. — Tana French

I have a big job on my hands now, there is no mistaking that, but I feel as though I have calmness within myself.
(on being Manchester City manager) — Stuart Pearce

Waiting for a hot pocket to cook we'd fuck and be satisfied, barefoot on new york city apartment linoleum. A satisfying hot pocket and a big ass smile and a tight ass grip and a wall beside a random pipe beside the stove where we left palm and dick prints. We fucked like this. Three condoms in an hour and a half and where are you now? Holding the hand of some local dude you wish was a little more international, wishing you had known I was enough and asked me to stay. You are standing in the kitchen waiting for popcorn to pop while he washes dishes, not knowing I'm wishing back for you. — Darnell Lamont Walker

In a big city like L.A. you can spend a lot of time surrounded by hundreds of people yet you feel like an alien or a ghost or something. — Morley

Was it possible to have an apartment sprayed for evil spirits like one would for bugs, or set up traps like for those big, city rats? — K.L. Burrell

I'm very fond of an old map of London that used to belong to my father. I'm a big London fan, and the evolution of the city is astonishing, when you look back to Pepys and how small it was - everyone knew each other. — Ben Schott

Butte was once a grand city. To me, that city is like one big stage for Edward Hopper. You could put your camera anywhere, and you felt you were looking at his paintings. — Wim Wenders

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

One of the big luxuries of being in Antwerp is that I can easily walk in the city. In Paris and New York, I am more recognized. — Dries Van Noten

The storm was resting. It didn't want to be, but it was. It had spent a fortnight understudying a famous anticyclone over the Circle Sea, turning up every day, hanging around in the cold front, grateful for a chance to uproot the occasional tree or whirl a farmhouse to any available emerald city of its choice. But the big break in the weather had never come. — Terry Pratchett

In the Big City a man will disappear with the suddenness and completeness of the flame of a candle that is blown out. — O. Henry

It is nice to have the fans recognize you, not because it makes you feel like a big-time player, but because they enjoy watching baseball and they like watching us play. It's going to get even better being here. Pretty soon, the city could be one of the best places to play. — Ryan Zimmerman

A city man is a home anywhere, for all big cities are much alike. But a country man has a place where he belongs, where he always returns, and where, when the time comes, he is willing to die. — Edward Abbey

Sergeant Colon of the Ankh-Morpork City Guard was on duty. He was guarding the Brass Bridge, the main link between Ankh and Morpork. From theft.
When it came to crime prevention, Sergeant Colon found it safest to think big. — Terry Pratchett

I loved the city, so the feeling in 2001 [election] first was shock, then (I was) nervous, then scared but then it's - I really wasn't happy and ecstatic like I thought I (would be). I was immediately hit with the enormity of the responsibility and the fact that most people in that town - particularly those that voted for me were placing their hopes and dreams in me. That is a big, big stressful place to be. — Kwame Kilpatrick

Intense sunlight rained down on a half-submerged city. Waves crashed between buildings that stood like waterlogged tombstones. Skyscrapers of smashed glass and twisted rusting metal jutted from the churning swell as islands of broken dreams. A familiar tower with a familiar clock face ... Big Ben. London stared back at Blue. What was left of it. A sea-drowned cemetery for a time and a place long dead. — Kev Heritage

I live in Sydney now. I came here for the show and never went home - I do like it, it's a big change ... it's a big city, it's very fast. — Kate DeAraugo

People who grew up in major cities may wonder why the hell I would act like it's a big deal to be unaccompanied in New York City at that age. It's populated with both adults and children, it's a functioning metropolis, Kevin McCallister was only ten in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, and that kid saved Christmas. Conversely, people from suburban areas act like my parents sent me wandering around the site of the Baby Jessica well, blindfolded and holding a flaming baton. So pick a side and prepare to judge me wither way! — Anna Kendrick

In my experience I haven't met too many uptight black people. I'm sure they're out there. Like I'm some big authority and I've lived in the inner city and ghetto. — Paul Reubens

I was always a big fan of Charlie Chaplin movies. I love 'The Great Dictator' and 'City Lights.' — Jack Reynor

Your presence here is is only a matter of conducting an experiment in limits, reminding yourself of what you aren't. — Jay McInerney

Washington is the city where the big men of little towns come to be disillusioned — Paul Laurence Dunbar

Big cities comforted me: the cover, the chaos, the hollow sympathy of the architecture, the Tube lines snaking underground. London could swallow you up, in a good way. There were times when I'd been broken and being subsumed into a city had made me feel part of a whole again. — Emma Jane Unsworth

The thing about Memphis is that it's pleasingly off-kilter. It's a great big whack job of a city. The anti-Atlanta. You go there, and you can't believe the things people will say, the way they think, the wobbling orbits of their lives. There's an essential otherness. — Hampton Sides

In the wasteland of metro Boston, at thirteen, fourteen, his big dream had been of a gun to his own head, putting him out of his misery - a misery that by sophomore year of college was indistinguishable from everybody else's. — Garth Risk Hallberg

My first year in L.A. I felt lost in that big city. It's easy to be tumbled around and not figure out where you fit in even when you find your little niche. — Steve Aoki

There is no tougher job in America than being a cop on the beat in a major city in this country, big and brawling. — Mark Shields

It's a big change for a country boy like me, to be in the limelight in New York City. It was most definitely a tough adjustment. — Brandon Jacobs

I think the Netherlands will become one big city at a point. It is inevitable when you live in a country with so many people. You cannot afford to leave nature as it is. Some people believe that the dunes should be left in their original state, but I think it's strange to let things become how they were 500 years ago. — Theo Jansen

Then Ordinary understood why he hadn't recognized his Big Dream when it was right in front of him. The lovely city he'd imagined all along was not his Dream - but a picture of what his Dream would accomplish. — Bruce H. Wilkinson