Quotes & Sayings About Crossing The Street

Lady Glossip: Mr. Wooster, how would you support a wife? Bertie Wooster: Well, I suppose it depends on who's wife it was, a little gentle pressure beneath the elbow while crossing a busy street usually fits the bill. — P.G. Wodehouse

The street signs", she replied simply. I simply felt stupid. "When you learn how to read, you can read Stop, Go, and the colors matter too!"
"Yeah?", (sigh).
"Yup! That leaf is green, it means Go. The yellow like the bus means careful. The red is Stop. Oh and there's crossing guards. And if you fall anyway you don't have to worry."
"Really? Why not?"
"Because you can always get up. And see?" she showed me her scar once more, "It hurts at first, but then it heals. — Yaritza Garcia

Every little thing makes a difference, whether you decide it yourself or whether it's pure accident. So many people have had the whole course of their lives changed by something perfectly simple like, let's say, crossing the street at one point instead of another."
"Yes, yes, yes, I know," Stenham said with exaggerated weariness. "As far as I'm concerned that's just as boring, and a lot more false, by the way. The point I'm trying to make is that he loves his world of Koranic law because it's his, and at the same time he hates it because his intuition tells him it's at the end of its rope. He can't expect anything more from it. And our world, he hates that too, just on general principles, and yet it's his only hope, the only way out - if there is one for him personally, which I doubt. — Paul Bowles

I had been in France less than 48 hours before that obliging agent of yours had to stop me being run over by a French van full of French chickens because I'd looked the wrong way before crossing the street. Which shows how cunning the Gestapo are. This person I've pulled from beneath the wheels of certain death was expecting traffic to travel on the left side of the road. Therefore she must be British, and is likely to have parachuted into Nazi-occupied France out of an Allied plane. I shall now arrest her as a spy. — Elizabeth Wein

I imagine crossing Grey Street in the daytime. Would night fall over me gently like a velvety curtain? Or would the day turn dark in the blink of my eye? I don't really need the sunrise to know that Shyness is different. It's like there is a thin layer of static over everything that stops me from seeing what's really going on. People here scuttle around like they're scared of their own shadows. — Leanne Hall

merrymaking. Yes, Katie would enjoy America, Frances thought as she put on her coat and her hat; in fact, America would enjoy Katie. She left her apartment block and, crossing the road, walked the short distance to the Ninth Avenue Elevated line at South Ferry. Although the elevated line took longer, she preferred not to take the subway system, being slightly claustrophobic. The idea of speeding along in a small underground train made her feel dizzy, so she preferred to travel aboveground by the El for her day of work as a domestic at the Walker-Browns' residence. As she took her familiar journey north that morning, along Greenwich Street and Battery Place to Gansevoort Street in lower Manhattan and on to Ninth Avenue — Hazel Gaynor

Careful crossing the street," Tommy called back to her as he crossed. [Jody is drunk]
"Ha!" Jody said. "I am a finely tuned predator. I am a superbeing. I
" And at that point she bounced her forehead off a light pole with a dull twang and was suddenly lying on her back, looking at the streetlights above her, which kept going out of focus, the bastards. — Christopher Moore

Every day as I wave to my children when I drop them off at school, or let one of them have a new experience - like crossing the street without holding my hand - I experience the struggle between love and non-attachment. It is hard to bear - the extreme love of one's child and the thought that ultimately the child belongs to the world. There is this horrible design flaw - children are supposed to grow up and away from you; and one of you will die first. — Sarah Ruhl

He received in essence the same answer from every other shop he tried. No one recognized his description of Hester, and none of them had sold digitalis to any member of the Farraline household, or indeed to anyone not known to them personally. He pursued the other sources of information, the public house, the street peddlers and crossing sweepers, the errand and delivery boys and the news vendors, but all he learned was very general gossip that seemed to serve no purpose. — Anne Perry

A Jew, crossing the street, bumped into an anti-Semite. "Swine!" bellowed the paskudnyak. "Goldberg," said the Jew, bowing. — Leo Rosten

Discussing it later, many of us felt we suffered a mental dislocation at that moment, which only grew worse through the course of the remaining deaths. The prevailing symptom of this state was an inability to recall any sound. Truck doors slammed silently; Lux's mouth screamed silently; and the street, the creaking tree limbs, the streetlight clicking different colors, the electric buzz of the pedestrian crossing box - all these usually clamorous voices hushes, or had begun shrieking at a pitch too high for us to hear, though they sent chills up our spines. Sound returned only once Lux had gone. Televisions erupted with canned laughter. Fathers splashed, soaking aching backs. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Crossing a single street transformed the way people talked, determined the size and condition of the homes, the dimension and character of the dreams. — Colson Whitehead

There is a term for people caught on a street crossing after the light has changed: "pedestrian-traffic residue". — Mavis Gallant

I confidently walked up to the counter, and his friends moved to the side to let me through. I handed him the note. "Happy Birthday," I said. Then I smiled and walked out of the store. I did my crossing-the street trick again, lurking in the shadows and watching. I could see him turn the note over in his hand, open it and read, then turn it over again. He passed it to his friends, who passed it between them. Then I watched him make a shrugging gesture with his hands. And then they were all laughing again. My mortification was total and overpowering. I was suddenly having a very difficult time standing. I had experienced a perfect note of utter and true clarity. He was straight. — Augusten Burroughs

Sometimes, God smites. Other times, he smiles. And all we are left with is to wonder why. A little girl dies crossing a street she's crossed a thousand times. Meanwhile, at that very same moment somewhere far away, another child escapes the wheels of an oncoming car by the skin of her milk teeth. Is there reason there? Purpose? Or are we all simply the victims of a God who can't tell his Ls from his Ts? — Christopher John Boyce

That's the way it is, he said, a slight sense of failure that keeps growing stronger and the body gets used to it. You can't escape the void, just as you can't help crossing the streets if you live in a city, with the added annoyance that sometimes the street is endlessly wide, the buildings look like warehouses out of gangster movies, and some people choose the worst moments to think about their mothers. — Roberto Bolano

You survived as a child because others helped to maintain your life. It continues to be true today, even when you think you are abandoned, rejected, neglected, and unloved: the tomatoes you eat sustain you, the crossing guard stops the traffic so you can get to the other side of the street, the dinner offered to you on clean white plates nourishes you, the paper on which these words are printed informs you. Noticed or ignored, this web of others protects and holds you and makes it possible for you to make a difference: to take what came to you as seed and pass it on as blossom, and what came as blossom and ripen it to fruit. — Dawna Markova

Do you feel it? It's a heightening of the senses, the kind that immobilizes a cat crossing the street, transfixed by the blinding headlights of a speeding car. You know you have to head for cover, run as far and as fast as your legs can carry you. But you can't. You just have to know what's coming - even if it kills you. — Psyche Roxas-Mendoza

Thanks to my mother, I was raised to have a morbid imagination. When I was a child, she often talked about death as warning, as an unavoidable matter of fact. Little Debbie's mom down the block might say, 'Honey, look both ways before crossing the street.' My mother's version: 'You don't look, you get smash flat like sand dab.' (Sand dabs were the cheap fish we bought live in the market, distinguished in my mind by their two eyes affixed on one side of their woebegone cartoon faces.)
The warnings grew worse, depending on the danger at hand. Sex education, for example, consisted of the following advice: 'Don't ever let boy kiss you. You do, you can't stop. Then you have baby. You put baby in garbage can. Police find you, put you in jail, then you life over, better just kill youself. — Amy Tan

Writers live twice. They go along with their regular life, are as fas as anyone in the grocery store, crossing the street, getting dressed for work in the morning. But there's another part of them that they have been training. The one that lives every second at a time. That sits down and sees their life again and goes over it. Looks at the texture and details. — Natalie Goldberg

I am used to going to and fro without much thought. Walking alone, I am used to never having a conversation about the whys, when's, and how's of getting from one side of a strett to the other.



But walking in twosome is different. It seems to require an ungodly amount of conversation. Because, it seems, James (my new husband) has a strategy for crossing roads, and a need to teach it to me. I did not know that; I did not know that my street-crossing skills were so in need of improvement. — Vivian Swift

But this is a remarkable egg, an egg worth talking about, an egg worth crossing the street for, an egg worth writing about. — Seth Godin

I can do this, he was thinking. All I have to do is just be as normal as everyone else. All I have to do is just not blow apart like a two-dollar clock. Just pick words and put one of them after the other like a baby learning to walk, like a drunk carefully crossing the street. — William Gay

A man is hit by a car while crossing a Beverly Hills street. A woman rushes to him and cradles his head in her lap, asking, Are you comfortable? The man answers, I make a nice living. — Milton Berle

Sorry but nothing of much importance ever happened to me ... I'm just a girl who forgot to look both ways before crossing the street. — Gabrielle Zevin

Lawyers-they get together all day and say to each other, "What can we postpone next?" The only thing they don't postpone, of course, is their bill, which arrives regularly. You've heard about the man who got the bill from his lawyer which said, "For crossing the street to speak to you and discovering it was not you, twelve dollars." — George S. Kaufman

I could have told him that nothing was safe and that no matter how careful you were and how hard you tried, there were still accidents, hidden traps, and snares. You could get killed on an airplane or crossing the street. Your marriage could fall apart when you weren't looking; your husband could lose his job; our baby could get sick or die. — Jennifer Weiner

answers) 8.There is no crosswalk and you see a pedestrian crossing your lane ahead. You should: Stop and let him/her finish crossing the street. 9.It is illegal to listen to: Listening to music through headphones that cover both ears. 10.Always stop before you cross railroad tracks when: You don't have room on the other side to completely cross the tracks. 11.When you tailgate other drivers (drive close to their rear bumper): You can frustrate the other drivers and make them angry. 12.Should you always drive slower than other traffic? No, you can block traffic when you drive too slowly. 13.You see a signal person at a road construction site ahead. You should obey his or her instructions: At all times. 14.If you plan to pass another vehicle, you should: Not assume the other driver will make space for you to return to your lane — Southern California Educational Services

Advice to children crossing the street: damn the lights. Watch the cars. The lights ain't never killed nobody. — Moms Mabley

There are all kinds of things that can scare you every day. What if someone you know gets cancer? What if something happens to you sister or your friends or your parents? And what if you get hit by a car crossing the street or the kids at school find out what an unnatural freak you are and what if you go too far out in the lake and the water is over your head and what if there's a fire or a war?
And you can lie awake at night and worry about these things because it's scary and unpredictable, but it's REAL. It's possible.
-Mackie Doyle, The Replacement — Brenna Yovanoff

It was fear. Fear that, after all the years of protecting his health, his heart, his mind, setting bedtimes and boundaries, giving warnings about strangers and looking both ways before crossing the street, it wouldn't be enough. Fear that, as he stood on the threshold of adulthood, forces beyond their control would take him down a path where they could no longer reach him. Fear that he'd be seduced by something ugly and would choose it. And that there would be nothing they could do but let him go. — Lisa Unger

I get a lot of letters. Not only from children but from adults, too. Almost every week, every month, clippings come in from some part of the world where ducks are crossing the street. — Robert McCloskey

The government's rationale here is beautiful in its simplicity. American criminals have constitutional rights not because they are natural-born Americans but precisely because they are criminals. Deportations, however, are not part of the criminal justice system. "Removal proceedings," wrote the circuit judge in the Gutierrez-Berdin case, "are civil, not criminal, and the exclusionary rule does not generally apply to them." So the undocumented alien who kills a room full of Rotarians with an ax has a right to counsel, a phone call, and protection against improper searches. The alien caught crossing the street on his way to work has no rights at all. Strangest — Matt Taibbi

We have bigger houses but smaller families;
more conveniences, but less time;
We have more degrees, but less sense;
more knowledge, but less judgment;
more experts, but more problems;
more medicines, but less healthiness;
We've been all the way to the moon and back,
but have trouble crossing the street to meet
the new neighbor.
We've built more computers to hold more
information to produce more copies than ever,
but have less communications;
We have become long on quantity,
but short on quality.
These times are times of fast foods;
but slow digestion;
Tall man but short character;
Steep profits but shallow relationships.
It is time when there is much in the window,
but nothing in the room.

--authorship unknown
from Sacred Economics — Charles Eisenstein

I got my heel stuck in a drain as I was crossing the street and cars were coming. It was really scary. A girl in heels in New York is a hard combination. — Sasha Pieterse

More data - such as paying attention to the eye colors of the people around when crossing the street - can make you miss the big truck. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I see other people crossing the street at the curb and I don't know how they can do it. — Steve Martin

Soon, I'm going to need help crossing the street. — Robert Plant

Directly in front of me, crossing the street, I saw a woman laughing and walking arm in arm with two men. When she came to the curb, she lifted her skirt with both hands and vulgarly displayed a pair of indigo stockings. — Nancy B. Brewer

I observed with disillusioned clarity the despicable nonentity of the street; its porches; its window curtains; the drab clothes, the cupidity and complacency of shopping women; and old men taking the air in comforters; the caution of people crossing; the universal determination to go on living, when really, fools and gulls that you are, I said, any slate may fly from a roof, any car may swerve, for there is neither rhyme nor reason when a drunk man staggers about with a club in his hand - that is all. — Virginia Woolf

I left the library. Crossing the street, I was hit head-on by a brutal loneliness. I felt dark and hollow. Abandoned, unnoticed, forgotten, I stood on the sidewalk, a nothing, a gatherer of dust. People hurried past me. and everyone who walked by was happier than I. I felt the old envy. I would have given anything to be one of them. — Nicole Krauss

We're going to go right by a couple 24/7s crossing town. Maybe we could stop and get some hot chocolate."
"That stuff they sell in those places is swill."
"Yeah, but it's chocolate swill." Peabody tried a pitiful, pleading look. "You wouldn't let her give us any of the good stuff."
"Maybe you'd like some cookies, too. Or little frosted cakes."
"That would be nice. Thanks for asking."
"That was sarcasm, Peabody."
"Yes, sir. I know. Responded in kind."
The easy laugh had the black cloud lifting. Because it did, Eve pulled over at a cross-street 24/7 and waited while Peabody ran in and loaded up. — J.D. Robb

When you were growing up, your mom and dad told you to look both ways before crossing the street or not to get into a car with a stranger. It's the same with the Internet. We have a big responsibility and a huge role in bringing all the stakeholders to the table - users, parents, educators, law enforcement, government organisations. — Chris DeWolfe

I think of a person I haven't seen or thought of for years, and ten minutes later I see her crossing the street. I turn on the radio to hear a voice reading the biblical story of Jael, which is the story that I have spent the morning writing about. A car passes me on the road, and its license plate consists of my wife's and my initials side by side. When you tell people stories like that, their usual reaction is to laugh. One wonders why.
I believe that people laugh at coincidence as a way of relegating it to the realm of the absurd and of therefore not having to take seriously the possibility that there is a lot more going on in our lives than we either know or care to know. Who can say what it is that's going on? But I suspect that part of it, anyway, is that every once and so often we hear a whisper from the wings that goes something like this: You've turned up in the right place at the right time. You're doing fine. Don't ever think that you've been forgotten. — Frederick Buechner

When I was maybe five or six years old, a woman down the street ... got flattened by a train. When I got older I realized it probably wasn't an accident. It was a late train and she was so sick and swollen with age she could barely move, so what the hell was she doing crossing the tracks at midnight on a Tuesday? But at the time my mom only said that God works in mysterious ways. AKA, God will make a pancake of a sick old woman who never did harm to anybody, so what do you think he'll do to you if you don't clean your room and brush your teeth and mind your gospel? — Lauren Oliver

I know that experts say you're more likely to get hurt crossing the street than you are flying, but that doesn't make me any less frightened of flying. If anything, it makes me more afraid of crossing the street. — Ellen DeGeneres

Parents teach their children to look both ways when crossing the street. They tell them to look only one way when choosing a religion. — Graham Kendall

Believe me, you can be in the middle of a beautiful take and the next thing you know you're awash in people crossing the street. You can't even find your actors. — Victor Levin

I'm dead, Makina said to herself when everything lurched: a man with a cane was crossing the street, a dull groan suddenly surged through the asphalt, the man stood still as if waiting for someone to repeat the question and then the earth opened up beneath his feet: it swallowed the man, and with him a car and a dog, all the oxygen around and even the screams of passers-by. I'm dead, Makina said to herself, and hardly had she said it than her whole body began to contest that verdict and she flailed her feet frantically backward, each step mere inches from the sinkhole, until the precipice settled into a perfect circle and Makina was saved. Slippery bitch of a city, she said to herself. Always about to sink back into the the cellar. — Yuri Herrera

Last summer, in London at least, the hoodie was transformed from a benign piece of leisurewear into a uniform for the disaffected, the angry, the malevolent. So much so that 'hoodie' was no longer a piece of clothing. It was a whole person. A hoodie was somebody likely to steal, plunder and do you unimaginable harm.

People were crossing the street when a hoodie crossed their path - even if it was a 70-year-old gentleman walking his dog. That's how quickly the fear had permeated the collective consciousness. And lifting the hood was tantamount to cocking a gun. — Mark Capell