City Lights And You Quotes & Sayings

New Yorkers love the bigness
the skyscrapers, the freedom, the lights. But they also love it when they can carve out some smallness for themselves. When the guy at the corner store knows which newspaper you want. When the barista has your order ready before you open your mouth. When you start to recognize the people in your orbit, and you know that, say, if you're waiting for the subway at eight fifteen on the dot, odds are the redhead with the red umbrella is going to be there too. — David Levithan

You didn't think I really liked you? Do you think I really like you now?"
He turned toward her, uncertainty in his face."You did go quite a lot of effort to be having this conversation, but ... I don't want to read too much of what I hope into that."
Val stretched out beside him, resting her head in the crook of his arm. "What do you hope?"
He pulled her close, hands careful not to touch her wounds as they wrapped around her. "I hope that you feel for me as I do for you," he said, his voice like a sigh against her throat.
And how is that?" she asked, her lips so close to his jaw that she could taste the salt of his skin when she moved them.
You carried my heart in your hands tonight," he said. "But I have felt as if you carried it long before that."
She smiled and let her eyes drift closed. They lay there together, under the bridge, city lights burning outside the windows like a sky full of falling stars, as they slid off into sleep — Holly Black

Introspective souls are often tormented by their passionate visions. This is because visionaries see what shall be and wake up to what is. However, if you couldn't see a glimpse of the city lights while stranded in the forest, how would you ever know to walk in that direction? Sometimes, your vision can't be put into action, until you gather the learning experiences, along your journey first. — Shannon L. Alder

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

You know where I'm from," he said, and she understood what he meant by this. Once we lived on an island in the ocean. Once we took the ferry to go to high school, and at night the sky was brilliant in the absence of all these city lights. Once we paddled canoes to the lighthouse to look at petroglyphs and fished for salmon and walked through deep forests, but all of this was completely unremarkable because everyone else we knew did these things too, and here in these lives we've built for ourselves, here in these hard and glittering cities, none of this would seem real if it wasn't for you. — Emily St. John Mandel

Having grown up here, I always wonder what it would be like to see this city as a tourist. Is it ever a disappointment? I have to believe that New York always lives up to its reputation. The buildings really are that tall. The lights really are that bright. There's truly a story on every corner. But it still might be a shock. To realize you are just one story walking among millions. To not feel the bright lights even as they fill the air. To see the tall buildings and only feel a deep longing for the stars. — David Levithan

You must look for constellations in the orange city lights. View each streetlamp as a star that's simply fallen from the night. So that even tired of footsteps feel like learning how to fly, and you're never truly trapped right where the earth touches the sky. Then when your world is turned upside down, you'll know no matter where you are, that you will always have the chance to fall asleep among the stars. — Erin Hanson

There's something about that tunnel that leads to downtown. It's glorious at night. Just glorious. You start on one side of the mountain, and it's dark, and the radio is loud. As you enter the tunnel, the wind gets sucked away, and you squint from the lights overhead. When you adjust to the lights, you can see the other side in the distance just as the sound of the radio fades to nothing because the waves just can't reach. Then, you're in the middle of the tunnel, and everything becomes a calm dream. As you see the opening get closer, you just can't get there fast enough. And finally, just when you think you'll never get there, you see the opening right in front of you. And the radio comes back even louder than you remember it. And the wind is waiting. And you fly out of the tunnel onto the bridge. And there it is. The city. A million lights and buildings and everything seems as exciting as the first time you saw it. It really is a grand entrance. — Stephen Chbosky

I remember looking out the window of the little maid's room where we had been installed, seeing the lights of the Palisades across the way, and thinking, There! There it is! There's New York, this wonderful city, I'll go live there someday. Even being in New York, the actual place, I found the idea of New York so wonderful that I could only imagine it as some other place, greater than any place that would let me sleep in it
a distant constellation of lights I had not yet been allowed to visit. I had arrived in Oz only to think, Well, you don't LIVE in Oz, do you? — Adam Gopnik

At night, what you see is a city, because all you see is lights. By day, it doesn't look like a city at all. The trees out-number the houses. And that's completely typical of Seattle. You can't quite tell: is it a city, is it a suburb, is the forest growing back? — Jonathan Raban

Once, I went to the roof of a project and saw a hawk perched on the rail; always, you see the city in the near distance, its towers and spires studded with lights, both stately and slapdash, like the crazy geometry of rock crystal. There were many days when you felt sorry for people who worked inside. — Edward Conlon

Life isn't worth living unless you are young and surrounded by other young people in a beautiful cold garden perfumed by dirt and flowers and fallen leaves, gleaming in the string of lights, listening to the quiet city on the last fine night of the year. — Lauren Groff

There is such a cool vibe in Nashville. It is has the excitement of a big city, but also has this amazing small town feel. I have definitely come to call it my home, and have my favorite go-to spots. But most of all it's the people. The southern charm, and hospitality. And some great shopping never hurts. As fun as Music City is during the day, the real magic happens at night ... The lights, the energy, the music, how could you not love this town? — Hayden Panettiere

I still search
for you in crowds,
in empty fields
and soaring clouds.
In city lights
and passing cars,
on winding roads
and wishing stars.
I wonder where
you could be now,
for years I've not said
your name out loud.
And longer since
I called you mine
time has passed
for you and I.
But I have learnt
to live without,
I do not mind
I still love you anyhow. — Lang Leav

I will never be old, Rachel promised herself. I will never be sad. I'd scarf a cyanide capsule first, kill myself like that friend of Lotto's everyone is crying about. Life isn't worth living unless you are young and surrounded by other young people in a beautiful cold garden perfumed by dirt and flowers and fallen leaves, gleaming in the string of lights, listening to the quiet city on the last fine night of the year. Under the dying — Lauren Groff

There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room. It's like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction
every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it's really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and excitement at about a million miles an hour. — Sylvia Plath

Ever since, New York has existed for me simultaneously as a map to be learned and a place to aspire too
a city of things and a city of signs, the place I actually am and the place I would like to be even when I am here. As a kid, I grasped that the skyline was a sign that could be, so to speak, relocated to New Jersey
a kind of abstract, receding Vision whose meaning would always be "out of reach," not a concrete thing signifying "here you are." Even when we are established here, New York still seems a place we aspire to. Its life is one thing
streets and hot dogs and brusqueness
and its symbols, the lights across the way, the beckoning skyline, are another. We go on being inspired even when we're most exasperated. — Adam Gopnik

The dark is settling in. The sky glows yellow- pale- anemic from the city lights. The Tenderloin at night is a real horror show. Every 3 feet someone is accosting you with a plea for a handout or the offer of drug or sex. The men and women wander the streets and alleys with a threatening, violont want. Takers looking to take, hustlers looking to hustle, all trying to satisfy a craving that is parpatually unsatisfiable. And tonight I'm one of them. — Nic Sheff

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

You cannot see the Milky Way in New York City any more ... We risk the loss of our sensual perception. And if you lose those, naturally, you try to compensate by other stimulations, by very loud noises, or by bright lights or drugs. — Rene Dubos

Oh, come now, Manon," Ilyse laughed, "It's my job to liven things up a bit, too. I can't let you and your dimples have all the fun. — Melika Dannese Lux

New York is a glamorous city, constituted mostly of nobodies. They crave the lights, and if they tell you differently, they're lying. Only dreamers come to New York. As a matter of course, few people have control of their lives. You live at the whim of your boss, your landlord, your grocer, the stranger, the judge, the bus driver, the mayor who won't let you smoke. On the other hand, you live at the whim of your whims, and that is the most exciting thing there is. — Charlie LeDuff

And give me some coffee. Black as midnight on a moonless night."
Harga looked surprised. That wasn't like Vimes.
"How black's that, then?" he said.
"Oh, pretty damn black, I should think."
"Not necessarily."
"What?"
"You get more stars on a moonless night. Stands to reason. They show up more. It can be quite bright on a moonless night."
Vimes sighed.
"An overcast moonless night?" he said.
Harga looked carefully at his coffee pot.
"Cumulus or cirro-nimbus?"
"I'm sorry? What did you say?"
"You get city lights reflected off cumulus, because it's low lying, see. Mind you, you can get high-altitude scatter off the ice crystals in
"
"A moonless night," said Vimes, in a hollow voice, "that is as black as coffee. — Terry Pratchett

I want so badly to help you realize, Elizabeth Anne, how difficult and puzzling and full of wonder it all is: some day I will tell you how I learned to watch the shifting light of autumn days or smelled the earth through snow in March; how one winter morning God vanished from my life and how one summer evening I sat in a Ferris wheel, looking down on a man that hurt me badly; I will tell you how I once travelled to Rome and saw all the soldiers in that city of dead poets; I will tell you how I met your father outside a movie house in Toronto, and how you came to be. Perhaps that is where I will begin. On a winter afternoon when we turn the lights on early, or perhaps a summer day of leaves and sky, I will begin by conjugating the elemental verb. I am. You are. It is. — Richard B. Wright

There are a few things in life so beautiful they hurt: swimming in the ocean while it rains, reading alone in empty libraries, the sea of stars that appear when you're miles away from the neon lights of the city, bars after 2am, walking in the wilderness, all the phases of the moon, the things we do not know about the universe, and you. — Beau Taplin

I came from the country, and when I came to the city, I was ridin' high, you know. I was seeing more lights than I ever dreamed to shine in the world. 'Cos where I came from, there wasn't too many lights. Bugs made a lot of light, but after that there wasn't no lights. — John Hunter

The stars are out,' Zoe said.
She was right. There were millions of them, with no city lights to ruin turn the sky orange.
'Amazing,' Bianca said. 'I've never actually seen the Milky Way.'
'This is nothing,' Zoe said. 'In the old days, there were more. Whole constellations have disappeared because of human light pollution.'
'You talk like you're not human,' I said.
Zoe raised an eyebrow. I am a Hunter. I care what happens to the wild places of the world. Can the same be said for thee?'
'For you,' Thalia corrected. 'Not thee.'
'But you use you for the beginning of a sentence.'
'And for the end,' Thalia said. 'No thou. No thee. Just you.'
Zoe threw up her hands in exasperation. 'I hate this language. It changes too often! — Rick Riordan

He thought of the boys and girls who looked for sweethearts at Mountain View Cemetery, and chorus girls who met their beaux behind scrim, and office romances that flourished in the buildings on Market Street, and he felt like there were little lights in alcoves here and there across the city, in cozy dens, in doorways during rainstorms, or even a chilly balcony on the Ferry building. Everywhere, little pairs of glowing lights. When you walked a city, wherever you looked, someone had probably fallen in love. — Glen David Gold

There was a sky somewhere above the tops of the buildings, with stars and a moon and all the things there are in a sky, but they were content to think of the distant street lights as planets and stars. If the lights prevented you from seeing the heavens, then preform a little magic and change reality to fit the need. The street lights were now planets and stars and moon. — Hubert Selby Jr.

It was nearly eight before he returned to the office. This was the hour when he found London most lovable; the working day over, her pub windows were warm and jewel-like, her streets thrummed with life, and the indefatigable permanence of her aged buildings, softened by the street lights, became strangely reassuring. We have seen plenty like you, they seemed to murmur soothingly, as he limped along Oxford Street carrying a boxed-up camp bed. Seven and a half million hearts were beating in close proximity in this heaving old city, and many, after all, would be aching far worse than his. Walking wearily past closing shops, while the heavens turned indigo above him, Strike found solace in vastness and anonymity. — Robert Galbraith

Every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it's really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and that excitement at about a million miles and hour. — Sylvia Plath

I looked up at the ivory towers above us all. Nowhere else equals the feral design of this city. Tall skyscrapers that act as gorges hollowing out between flat cement dancing into narrow alleyways like bottomless pits. Building walls rusted the color of blood. Sometimes when you look down the horizon from afar the city looks wider than it is, like a thin field of magical lights gleaming with the hopes of children and idealists; a light on at midnight in one of the penthouses or the changing hues of the Empire State Building. Most of the time though, the city is covered with a layer of honking cars and greed, sirens and the war cry of solicitors, all full of brambles and impenetrable conscience; garbage, steaming manholes, and heat waves twirling smog and pollution through your lungs like mirages as you walk breathlessly through a boiling desert. — Bruce Crown

Slowly, his eyes came up and he looked through the kitchen window and out through the Cahuenga Pass. The lights of Hollywood glimmered in the cut, a mirror reflection of the stars of all galaxies everywhere. He thought about all that was bad out there. A city with more things wrong than right. A place where the earth could open up beneath you and suck you into the blackness. A city of lost light. His city. It was all of that and, still, always still, a place to begin again. His city. The city of the second chance.
Bosch nodded and bent down. He closed his eyes, put his hands under the water and brought them up to his face. The water was cold and bracing, as he thought any baptism, the start of any second chance, should be. — Michael Connelly

To save energy, New York City is now dimming the lights of the skyscrapers and the skyline at night. There's a bad side to this. If you need Batman, you have to text him. — David Letterman

Then millions of lights came on in the canyons, along the freeways, and through the vast sweep of the Los Angeles basin, and it was almost as if you were looking down upon the end point of the American dream, a geographical poem into which all our highways eventually led, a city of illusion founded by conquistadors and missionaries and consigned to the care of angels, where far below the spinning propellers of our seaplane black kids along palm-tree-lined streets in Watts hunted each other with automatic weapons. — James Lee Burke

As you enter the tunnel, the wind gets sucked away, and you squint from the lights overhead. When you adjust the lights, you can see the other side in the distance just as the sound of the radio fades to nothing because the waves just can't reach. Then, you're in the middle of the tunnel, and everything becomes a calm dream. As you see the opening get closer, you just can't get there fast enough. And finally, just when you think you'll never get there, you see the opening right in front of you. And the radio comes back even louder than you remember it. And the wind is waiting. And you fly out of the tunnel onto the bridge. And there it is. The city. A million lights and buildings and everything seems as exciting as the first time you saw it. — Stephen Chbosky

There is a definite romance that buzzes and ticks and takes you by the elbow when Christmastime arrives in the city. It's something about the lights. The way the wreaths dress up the streetlamps. How everyone seems to commute home at night with much more purpose, and I often found myself wondering what they were barreling back for. If it was a tree that needed to be decorated, or cookies needing to be frosted, or just someone worth holding all winter long. — Hannah Brencher

Lying flat on my back, with my toes dipped into the lake, I stared at the stars for a second. I guess I should have pondered their beauty and realized the rarity of a sky unsaturated by city lights, or something. But it occurred to me that you could probably see stars from the vast majority of the earth. It was city lights that were actually rare. — Emily Adrian