Borough Quotes & Sayings

Mint-street and Kent-street--those old plague-spots that disgrace and disfigure the fair face of the Borough of Southwark--teem with blackguardism and vice; but here, too, you find that the birds who here flock are strictly of a feather. Cow-cross, — Henry Mayhew

New York was always more expensive than any other place in the United States, but you could live in New York - and by New York, I mean Manhattan. Brooklyn was the borough of grandparents. We didn't live well. We lived in these horrible places. But you could live in New York. And you didn't have to think about money every second. — Fran Lebowitz

The whole point of bike-sharing is to give New Yorkers another way to commute. A lot of folks in Bay Ridge work in downtown Brooklyn or other parts of the borough. For them, it would make more sense to hop on a Citi Bike than to wait for a train or a bus. — Sal Albanese

Where has God promised to fulfill our every whim according to the minutia of our earthly desires? Where has He promised to keep us from suffering or disappointment? Things He did not spare His own Son? You were raised in one of the finest manors in the borough, by a man and woman who could not have loved you better. You have been given the best education, the best of everything. You are of sound mind and limb, and yet you dare to rail at God? I for one grow weary of it. Now leave off simpering like an ungrateful brat and make something of this new life you've been given. — Julie Klassen

We were scarecrows in blue uniforms. After a grand total of five days of blackboard instruction and fifty rounds at the NYPD firing range, my new police academy classmates and I were standing out on the sidewalks of central Brooklyn pretending to be police officers. They gave us badges. They gave us handcuffs. They gave us guns - standard police-issue Smith & Wesson .38 Specials. They told us, "Good luck." In early July 1966, riots had broken out in East New York, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Brownsville, Brooklyn. Hundreds of angry young men were roaming the streets and throwing bottles and rocks. Already they had injured police officers and attempted to flip over a radio car. On one corner, police found eighteen Molotov cocktails. The borough commander was calling for reinforcements - and fast. — Ray Kelly

My first paying job was a in a production of Neil LaBute's 'Bash: Latter Day Plays' at the Union Street theater in Borough. I played the 'Medea Redux' character. That was my first job out of drama school. I can't remember how much I got paid. I'm sure it was pennies. — Juliet Rylance

Queens is so often treated as a stepchild and labeled as an outer borough. At the very least, if I could help bring more attention to what we need, and what the federal government needs to do to improve the quality of life of people right here in Queens - any way that I can do that, I'm very happy to do that. — Grace Meng

In the borough, three boys circled a white camel
that wept because at dawn
there was no other way except through the needle's eye!
Oh cross! Oh, nails! Oh, thorn!
Oh, thorn driven to the bone until the planet rust to pieces! — Federico Garcia Lorca

David Henderson's 1970 poem "Keep on Pushing," also analyzed the geographies of urban warfare in the Summer of 1964's Harlem Riots. Henderson warned of the crude mathematics of wide avenues that can swallow protest pickets, easily dismantle popular barricades, and muster five hundred cops in fifteen minutes, but he also suggests how, "For Harlem/ reinforcements come from the Bronx / just over the three-borough Bridge. / a shot a cry a rumor / can muster five hundred Negroes / from idle and strategic street corners / bars stoops hallways windows. — Anonymous

It was joy, joy, happy joy.
Happy, happy joy.
A big fat smiley sun rose above the rooftops and beamed down its blessings onto the borough known as Brentford. — Robert Rankin

But I'm sorry, where did you think you were, motherfucker? Connecticut? You're in a magic safe house in Bed-Stuy, borough of Brooklyn. There was a considerable Venn diagram overlap between people who lived in Bed-Stuy and people who had motherfucking guns. Fool. — Lev Grossman

And then I picture my father closing the door gently but firmly and keeping me safe inside this house. Inside these walls where I have been safe for so long. But this house isn't safe anymore, I remind myself. This house is where I first saw Ky's face on a microcard. Where they searched my father. Is there a safe place anywhere in this Borough? In this City, this Province, this world? — Ally Condie

We can't have Harlem become one borough for the rich. — Charles B. Rangel

At the south-eastern corner of the physical domain, near to the Centre of the Land, is to be found a gaming hall wherein the Master Angles play at Trilliards, this being what their Awe-full game is rightly called. The intricacies of their play determine the trajectories of lives in the First Borough, such lives being subject to the four eternal forces that the Angles represent. These are Authority, Severity, Mercy and Novelty, as symbolised respectively by Castle, Death's-head, Cross and Phallus. The Arch-Builder Gabriel governs the Castle pocket, Uriel the Death's-head, Mikael the Cross and Raphael the Phallus. — Alan Moore

During the last considerable epidemic at the turn of the century, I was a member of the Health Committee of London Borough Council, and I learned how the credit of vaccination is kept up statistically by diagnosing all the revaccinated cases (of smallpox) as pustular eczema, varioloid or what not
except smallpox. — George Bernard Shaw

I don't feel proprietary, but I do feel there is a human identity to the borough of Hackney that's quite peculiar. It was always bloody-minded and difficult; it always stood up to central government. — Iain Sinclair

There is now a desperate need for a London-wide left caucus of those interested in the GLC and local councils so that we can compare and discuss what is happening in each borough. — Ken Livingstone

Pipes filled with brine that spied on the inhabitants of buildings watching, listening, hunting. You might obscure the attention of the Londonmancers, with the complicity of a treacherous borough, with strikebreaking hexes strong enough: but nothing could stay hidden from an inquisitive sea. — China Mieville

WESTBURY, a nasty odious rotten-borough, a really rotten place. — William Cobbett

It's a nice neighborhood, like the one I left. My home borough is Brooklyn and Queens. — Anthony Weiner

Back in Borough I ran barefoot on the grass to try to help Ky. Out here I wear heavy boots and have to run around rocks that threaten my ankle and yet I feel lighter than I did back then, and lighter by far than I ever felt running on the smooth belt of the tracker. I'm filled with adrenaline and hope; I could run forever this way, running to Ky. — Ally Condie

I make music for the whole world, not just one borough. — ASAP Ferg

Flea-Market vendors are frozen mid-haggle. Middle-aged women are frozen in the middle of their lives. The gavels of frozen judges are frozen between guilt and innocence. On the ground are the crystals of the frozen first breaths of babies, and those of the last gasps of the dying. — Jonathan Safran Foer

New York City is the capital for Baseball, not just for the pros, but also for the kids throughout the city, as well. No matter who you root for, the Borough Cup is going to make every kid and community that participates a winner. — Mark Teixeira

Nobody has ever called Shea Stadium a cathedral. In style, it was more like the old warehouse or outdated movie theater that Korean worshippers have transformed into a church in the borough of Queens. Not a cathedral - but a place where people go to be fulfilled, nonetheless. — George Vecsey

Brooklyn is a very weird borough. — Keeth Smart

This is why I prefer Queens to any other place. The borough of my parents and small business owners is populated by people who know how to work around the system when it tries to fuck you. — Jessica Valenti

The people of the East End did not want to overthrow the British government. On the contrary, they were deeply attached to their elections and their borough councils and their Houses of Parliament. They liked their system of government so much that they were determined to defend it against Fascism even if it would not defend itself. — Ken Follett

It's like escaping a hot, bright room
for the serenity of a city at night, covered in snow.
People eliminated. A carpet of silence
for taxis to whisper across. The world becoming
a pleasant dream of itself. The itch
of want smoldering to life on skin. Memory sends
a chill vanishing between vertebrae.
It's New Year's Eve. Hail the Calendar! As if
clocks will pause for a moment
before reloading their long rifles. Years are tiny
freckles on the face of a century.
Where is the constellation we gazed at each night
Through a bill rolled so tight
the first President lost his breath, as our eyeballs
literally unraveled? I am alone
in the rectangular borough in the observatory,
where even fire trucks can't rescue
the arsonist stretching his calves in my brain. — Jeffrey McDaniel

The most celebrated pocket borough was Dunwich, a coastal town in Suffolk that had once been a great port - the third biggest in England - but was washed into the sea during a storm in 1286. Despite its conspicuous nonexistence, it was represented in Parliament until 1832 by a succession of privileged nonentities. — Bill Bryson

Although I grew up as a fan of the culture from the disco D.J. era as a young kid and hearing the beginnings of hip-hop, I'm hearing it all from another borough in Brooklyn. — Fab Five Freddy

We are experiencing such large support for the Olympic relay that our advice is to stay in your neighbourhood, stay in your borough and wait for it to come near you. — Boris Johnson

Cities are magical things. You know the energy in them. You have to walk the streets in any borough here and you can see between what was in this city in the 1970's and where it is today and how much more energy there is and how much more just sheer. — Juan Enriquez

I am the only Republican Congressman who represents a borough within New York City, a city of 8.5 million people. — Michael Grimm