City Rats Quotes & Sayings

And right here
Right now
All the way in Battery City
The little children
Raise their open filthy palms
Like tiny daggers up to heaven
And all the juvee halls
And the Ritalin rats
Ask angels made from neon
And fucking garbage
Scream out, "What will save us?"
And the sky opened up — Gerard Way

One of my fun road trips was [when] a group of guys and I rented a tour bus and we started in Orlando and drove all the way around the country going to baseball games. That was an awesome trip because each night we would go to a new baseball stadium, watch a baseball game, get in the bus, wake up [in] the next city, go to another baseball game. We did this for a little while and it was great. We called that trip the Rats on the Bus and it was a fun trip. — Alfonso Ribeiro

Personally, if I were trying to discourage people from smoking, my sign would be a little different. In fact, I might even go too far in the opposite direction. My sign would say something like, "Smoke if you wish. But if you do, be prepared for the following series of events: First, we will confiscate your cigarette and extinguish it somewhere on the surface of your skin. We will then run you nicotine-stained fingers through a paper shredder and throw them into the street, where wild dogs will swallow them and then regurgitate them into the sewers, so that infected rats can further soil them before they're flushed out to sea with the rest of the city's filth. After such time, we will sysematically seek out your friends and loved one and destroy their lives."
Wouldn't you like to see a sign like that? — George Carlin

Rats had featured largely in the history of Ankh-Morpork. Shortly before the Patrician came to power there was a terrible plague of rats. The city council countered it by offering twenty pence for every rat tail. This did, for a week or two, reduce the number of rats - and then people were suddenly queing up with tails, the city treasury was being drained, and no one seemed to be doing much work. And there still seemed to be a lot of rats around. Lord Vetinari had listened carefully while the problem was explained, and had solved the thing with one memorable phrase which said a lot about him, about the folly of bounty offers, and about the natural instinct of Ankh-Morporkians in any situation involving money: Tax the rat farms. — Terry Pratchett

I was born October 5, 1957, on the South Side of Chicago, in the Woodlawn area, a neighborhood that hasn't changed much in forty-five years. Our house was on 66th and Blackstone, but the city tore it down when the rats took over. — Bernie Mac

New York City has 2 million rats. We used to have 8 million rats. Now we're down to 2 million. You know what that means? We lose four electoral votes. — David Letterman

Rain is the subject of prayer, the kind gesture of saints. Dear City, explain your irreverence: in you, rain is a visitor with nowhere to go. Where is the ground that knows only the love of water? What are the passageways to your heart? Pity the water that stays and rises on the streets, pity the water that floods into houses, so dark and filthy and heavy with rats and dead leaves and plastic. How ashamed water is to be what you have made it. What have you done to its beauty, its graceful body in pictures of oceans, its clear face in a glass? — Conchitina Cruz

Mice and any rodentia. Guinea pigs. Even rabbits, I can't stand. Rabbits are cousins to rats. It's a class thing. If you had to grow up with rats scampering in your backyard, because the city services were cut in half and the population in your neighborhood doubled, then that also is going to mean that the flora and fauna are going to grow as well. So that's a part of it. That's why I can't go to Hindu countries where they respect rats and mice, and I can't go camping. — Sandra Cisneros

Underground, in the dark wet hole that was home to the spiders and the rats, something moved. It had no right to be down there but it belonged nowhere else. Half drowned half alive it pushed the water ahead of it into the culverts and drains as it passed.
Right under the city and out into the suburbs and fields these tunnels fed into the river and the network of canals that had fed the industrial revolution. A thousand eyes, some blinded, that had never seen the sun strained in the soiled darkness. It struggled on and it listened with a thousand ears not its own and it cried. — Karl P.T. Walsh

We thought New York City was home to 8 million rats. Turns out, that's a little high. The actual number is 2 million rats. That explains the light turnout for the midterm elections. — David Letterman

Celibacy bestows on a man the qualified freedom of a besieged city where one sometimes has to eat rats. — Sean O Faolain

A beam or pillar can be used to batter down a city wall, but it is no good for stopping up a little hole - this refers to a difference in function. Thoroughbreds like Qiji and Hualiu could gallop a thousand li in one day, but when it came to catching rats they were no match for the wildcat or the weasel - this refers to a difference in skill. The horned owl catches fleas at night and can spot the tip of a hair, but when daylight comes, no matter how wide it opens its eyes, it cannot see a mound or a hill - this refers to a difference in nature. Now do you say, that you are going to make Right your master and do away with Wrong, or make Order your master and do away with Disorder? If you do, then you have not understood the principle of heaven and earth or the nature of the ten thousand things. This is like saying that you are going to make Heaven your master and do away with Earth, or make Yin your master and do away with Yang. Obviously it is impossible. — Zhuangzi

I lived on a farm with cows, and I lived in the city with rats. My family stayed in Colorado for a while, then went from Los Angeles to Arizona. People would ask me where I'm from, and I would have to say, 'I don't have a clear answer for you.' — Jason Behr

You want proof evolution is for real, don't waste your time with fossils; just check out the New York City rat. They started out as immigrants, stowaways in some ship's cargo hold. Only the survivors got to breed, and they've been improving with every new
litter. Smarter, faster, stronger. Getting ready to rule. Manhattan wouldn't be the first island they took over. — Andrew Vachss

It seemed no amount of praying could diminish the plague's wrath. By the time city officials realized it was the rats that were causing the disease, it was too late, but Venice still enforced a decree by which all incoming vessels had to anchor offshore for a full forty days before they would be permitted to unload. To this day, the number forty - quaranta in Italian - served as a grim reminder of the origins of the word quarantine. — Dan Brown

RATS ARE NOT MADE; PEOPLE ARE BORN RATS." - Mathew J. Mari, New York City Criminal Attorney for — Joe Bruno

Tell Isabelle no."
"But she thinks it's a good idea," Alec protested.
"Then tell her no twice."
Alec frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Oh, just that some of Isabelle's ideas are world-beaters and some are total disasters. Remember that idea she had about using abandoned subway tunnels to get around under the city? Talk about giant rats-"
"Lets not," said Simon. "I'd rather not talk about rats at all, in fact."
"This is different," said Alec. "She wants us to go to the Seelie Court."
"You're right, this is different," said Jace. "This is her worst idea ever."
-Jace, Alec, & Simon, pg.145- — Cassandra Clare

At the bottom of the social heap is the black man in the big-city ghetto. He lives night and day with the rats and the cockroaches and drowns himself with alcohol and anesthetizes himself with dope, to try and forget where and what he is. That Negro has given up all hope. He's the hardest one for us to reach, because he's the deepest in the mud. But when you get him, you've got the best kind of Muslim. I look upon myself as a prime example of this category - as graphic an example as you could find of the salvation of the black man. — Malcolm X

Poor children live in a particularly dangerous world
an urban world of broken stair railings, of busy streets serving as playgrounds, of lead paint, rats and rat poisons, or a rural world where families do not enjoy the minimal levels of public health accepted as standard for nearly a century. Whether in city or country, this is a world where cavities go unfilled and ear infections threatening permanent deafness go untreated. It is world where even a small child learns to be ashamed of the way he or she lives. — Kenneth Keniston

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

Isabelle says the Queen of the Seelie Court has requested an audience with us."
"Sure," said Magnus. "And Madonna wants me as a backup dancer on her next world tour."
Alec looked puzzled. "Who's Madonna?"
"Who's the Queen of the Seelie Court?" said Clary.
"She is the Queen of Faerie," said Magnus. "Well, the local one, anyway."
Jace put his head in his hands. "Tell Isabelle no."
"But she thinks it's a good idea," Alec protested.
"Then tell her no twice."
Alec frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Oh, just that some of Isabelle's ideas are world-beaters and some are total disasters. Remember that idea she had about using abandoned subway tunnels to get around under the city? Talk about giant rats - "
"Let's not," said Simon. "I'd rather not talk about rats at all, in fact. — Cassandra Clare

August in Kansas City is hotter than two rats f**king in a sock. — Ichiro Suzuki

The rats had crept out of their holes to look on, and they remained looking on for hours; soldiers and police often passing between them and the spectacle, and making a barrier behind which they slunk, and through which they peeped. The father had long ago taken up his bundle and hidden himself away with it, when the women who had tended the bundle while it lay on the base of the fountain, sat there watching the running of the water and the rolling of the Fancy Ball - when the one woman who had stood conspicuous, knitting, still knitted on with the steadfastness of Fate. The water of the fountain ran, the swift river ran, the day ran into evening, so much life ran in the city ran into death according to rule, time and tide waited for no man, the rats were sleeping close together in their dark holes again, the Fancy Ball was lighted up at supper, all things ran their course — Charles Dickens

A sickening howl stopped her, sucking the air out of her lungs.
The night's chatter silenced, even the loitering city rats pausing to listen.
Scarlet had heard wild wolves before, prowling the countryside in search of easy prey on the farms.
But never had a wolf's howl send a chill down her spine like that. — Marissa Meyer

If not for the rats you could crawl beneath a bush. A bush. A bench. The alliterative universe. Rats too can pass through that needle's eye to enter heaven ... This box held a refrigerator, the refrigerator is an apartment, a man is in the box ... Wake up on the grass, soaking wet. Dew is the piss of God. 'Another bullshit night in suck city, my father mutters. — Nick Flynn

You do fried rat?" said Glod. "Best damn fried rat in the city," said Gimlet. "Okay. Give me four fried rats." "And some dwarf bread," said Imp. "And some coke," said Lias, patiently. "You mean rat heads or rat legs?" "No. Four fried rats." "And some coke." "You want ketchup on those rats?" "No." "You sure?" "No ketchup." "And some coke. — Terry Pratchett

This was London, after all. I had read somewhere that wherever you stand in the entire city, you're never more than twenty yards from a rat. There were 50 million of them. That was like seven rats per human. — Amanda Gefter