Old Urban Quotes & Sayings

The old frame house down near the waterfront had never held so many people since the day it was put up. It must have been a pleasant place fifty years before: trees overhanging the limpid water, cows grazing in the meadows on both sides of the river, little frame houses like this one dotting the banks here and there.
It wasn't a pleasant place any more: garbage scows, coal yards, the river a greasy gray soup. Dead-end blocks of decrepit tenements on one side of it, lumberyards and ice-plants and tall stacks on the other.
The house was set far back from the street, hemmed in by the blank walls that rose around it.
("I Wouldn't Be In Your Shoes") — Cornell Woolrich

It is widely believed that Christianity remained an essentially urban cult and that the population of the countryside clung for generations to the old beliefs. The word 'pagan' comes from paganus, or someone who lived in the countryside (pagus). Unfortunately, we know so little about the religious life in rural areas that this remains conjectural. Paganus was usually derogatory - something like 'yokel' or 'hick' would give the right idea - and may just reflect the common belief of urban dwellers that countrymen were dull and backward. — Adrian Goldsworthy

I always stay in the urban comedy genre because it just never gets old. It's one of those things that people watch, again and again. This is that kind of movie. It gives you longevity. — Terry Crews

We listen to the old radio shows. Light flares and spreads across the blue-banded edge, sunrise, sunset, the urban grids in shadow. There is a sweetness in the tenor voice of the young man singing, a simple vigour that time and distance and random noise have enveloped in eloquence and yearning. Every sound, every lilt of strings has this veneer of age. — Don DeLillo

The arctic pavement turned into a whirlwind of viscous blood. The fiery shadows on the metropolitan walls blitzed him, avenging overachievers starved for vengeance. He fell into the abyss. His migraine made his head feel heavier than it was. Thoughts of her were coals for the old train engine inside his head. — Bruce Crown

But you're out of another world old kid ... You ought to live on top of the Woolworth Building in an apartment made of cutglass and cherry blossoms. — John Dos Passos

To ignore [the] great social facts
political facts, if you please
and over-emphasize the old moral responsibility of the 'domestic' mother is a hollow mockery and betrays a hopeless ignorance of industrial and urban conditions in the Twentieth Century ... Everything that counts in the common life is political. — Mary Ritter Beard

I invite you all to visit our new Harold Square or Space 98 stores in New York. I think you'll agree with me that these stores have a distinct Urban Outfitters personality, with fresh, exciting product and an experience that resonates with the 18 to 28 year old urban-dwelling customer. — Richard Hayne

I never realised that the Edinburgh skyline was so interesting - it's gothic and very urban and there's a lot of church spires and old brownstone buildings. — Jamie Bell

It is not, of course, only the Japanese who find flat sterile surfaces attractive and kirei. Foreign observers, too, are seduced by the crisp borders, sharp corners, neat railings, and machine-polished textures that define the new Japanese landscape, because, consciously or unconsciously, most of us see such things as embodying the very essence of modernism. In short, foreigners very often fall in love with kirei even more than the Japanese do; for one thing, they can have no idea of the mysterious beauty of the old jungle, rice paddies, wood, and stone that was paved over. Smooth industrial finish everywhere, with detailed attention to each cement block and metal joint: it looks 'modern'; ergo, Japan is supremely modern. — Alex Kerr

The Council Wars era from 1983 to 1986 and the brief months from 1986 to 1987 when Mayor Washington gained control over the council were among the most dramatic periods in Chicago's history. Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, women, and homosexuals gained real power at City Hall for the first time. Opposition to Reaganomics and support for the city as a nuclear weapons-free zone were led by the mayor and his department heads, not just opposition groups. The growth machine of the old Chicago regime, which favored urban growth focused on major public works projects and development in the downtown Loop area, was replaced by a balanced program of neighborhood, as well as downtown, economic development.33 — Dick Simpson

Voodoo very old magic - possibly one of the oldest forms of all time. It's often referred to as vodou or voudoun....
Voodoo worships the loa, which are literally spirits - like ghosts - but much more powerful. The priestess can summon the loa, and the spirit inhabits her body. It's called being 'ridden — Amanda Carlson

I never envisioned when I was reading that comic as a 17-year-old that I would have the opportunity to actually play the character. — Karl Urban

And that is true in 85 percent of kids; it's kids who live in old, dilapidated, mostly urban housing. But that still leaves 15 percent of the cases that occur in middle- or upper-class families, usually associated with home renovations. People are sanding paint, removing banisters, cleaning up windowsills, and they don't realize that they're spewing lead dust around in the house. And then the kids get it. — Deirdre Imus

And there is an earlier Wilson cycle, too, a billion years old, entrapped alongside the Appalachians: the Grenville, which rises to the surface in Central Park, New York, to remind us that the human and urban is no more than foam on the sea of the past. — Richard Fortey

God, why do I bother trying to help you? It's not like you appreciate it. It's not like the word 'thanks' is in your vocabulary. It's like you're not capable of being nice to someone you decided to despise when you were six-years-old. Sure, about twelve years have passed, but what's time compared to your rock-headed mind? - Tran — Krista Alasti

You're not prepared physically or mentally to pick a fight with a thousand-year-old vampire. he said. 'He is more cunning and far more ruthless than you.'
'Maybe I'll surprise you,' I said ... — Evette Davis

The power of the print reviewer is one of those urban myths. There have always been shows that slipped under the critical radar to become popular successes: 'Tobacco Road', 'Abie's Irish Rose' and our old friend 'Spider-Man', which got the worst reviews in theatre history and is still apparently going strong. — Ben Brantley

They had pulled me from the hemorrhaging, dying body of my mother and turned me over to the care of the man who was not my father. He had taken me home to their tiny apartment above the old hardware store and done what little he knew to take care of me.
It took less than six weeks for him to realize his mistake. Maybe even less than six hours, but he never abandoned me. He clung to me as though I was the last remnant of some great and powerful love.
And that gave me hope that maybe my mother was really something else and not just some girl who got knocked up by a guy whose name she didn't even know. She was something special, someone worthy of a man's loyalty and devotion.
Rocky Evans — Gwenn Wright

That's what drives science though: trying to find out the way things are, the way they were, and the way it really works. If that is your goal, then you want to make sure that your information is accurate, and if it's not, then it doesn't matter how much you liked that old urban legend or fictional factoid you once bought into. You will discard it, and be embarrassed by it, seeking instead for truth. — Aron Ra

The 370-year-old antique shop Trifles and Folly is the heart of 'Deadly Curiosities,' my new urban fantasy novel from Solaris Books. — Gail Z. Martin

There's so much material out there that's unnecessarily racist. It takes a shot at what is 'urban' or demonstrates blackness with some sassy, neck-jiving character that's not even relevant to the plot. I see it time and time again, and it doesn't move the story forward. It just kind of cryogenically freezes us in this old racial paradigm. — Jesse Williams

While my chosen form of story-writing is obviously a special and perhaps a narrow one, it is none the less a persistent and permanent type of expression, as old as literature itself. There will always be a certain small percentage of persons who feel a burning curiosity about unknown outer space, and a burning desire to escape from the prison-house of the known and the real into those enchanted lands of incredible adventure and infinite possibilities which dreams open up to us, and which things like deep woods, fantastic urban towers, and flaming sunsets momentarily suggest. — H.P. Lovecraft

To gain your heart's desire you have to lose some part of your old life, your old self. To do that you have to have courage; without it, you can't make the leap. And if you don't make the leap you have only three choices: You can hate yourself for not taking the chance, you can hate the person from whom you've sacrificed your happiness, or you can hate the one who offered you happiness, and blame them for your lack of courage, convince yourself it wasn't real. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Sustainability is now a big baggy sack in which people throw all kinds of old ideas, hot air and dodgy activities in order to be able to greenwash their products and feel good. — Kevin McCloud

Even though Pope Urban VIII reversed the pronouncements of his predecessors by declaring slavery unacceptable in the mid-seventeenth century, the vast majority of Protestant Christians in America considered slavery and white supremacy to be absolutely consistent with "biblical" Christianity. It would take American Protestants over a hundred years to make slavery history. Even then, they would find ways to cleverly camouflage the old Doctrine of Discovery and its white supremacist scaffolding under distinctly American terms like Manifest Destiny and American exceptionalism, terms still celebrated in many sectors of US society today. Professor — Brian D. McLaren

She wears those old fashioned pj's like body armour. Going to bed these days is like wresting with Kevlar. — Poppet

McGahern still lives on and works a farm in Leitrim, and friends say that even though he has held high profile academic posts round the world as a visiting professor he remains essentially a countryman.

Last term he taught in an upstate New York college, but seeing him in the soulless urban grid of downtown Syracuse wearing an old tweed flat cap and long black overcoat, he could have been in an Irish agricultural town on market day as he casually engaged strangers on the street to ask for advice on finding a decent restaurant. Friends say he has extraordinary confidence in who he is and where he's from - he behaves pretty much the same way wherever is and whoever he is with. — John McGahern

My thousands-of-years-old virgin... — Lisa Kessler

Socialism is not about big concepts and heavy theory. Socialism is about decent shelter for those who are homeless. It is about water for those who have no safe drinking water. It is about health care, it is about a life of dignity for the old. It is about overcoming the huge divide between urban and rural areas. It is about a decent education for all our people. Socialism is about rolling back the tyranny of the market. As long as the economy is dominated by an unelected, privileged few, the case for socialism will exist. — Chris Hani

What was she doing here? Private detectives were for insecure housewives, parents of troubled teens, bent old ladies who'd forgotten where they parked. She was none of the above. She was a sane, stable, capable adult. Yet here she was.
Desperate times, and all that. — Laura Oliva

There were a few nighttime pedestrians on the block, but they continued on their way, dutifully ignoring the zombie vomiting blood out of the back of my car. Good old New Yorkers. They really couldn't care less. — Nicholas Kaufmann

Urban Outfitters - I love it. It's almost like Forever 21, but for, like, the 24- to 25-year-old girl, getting a little bit older. — Keke Palmer

Hockey historians say the handshake dates to English settlers in Canada, who preached an upper-class version of sportsmanship in the 19th century. Soon, tough kids in urban and prairie rinks began imitating imagined dukes and earls of the old country. — George Vecsey

So Socrates was a kind of gadfly. He was a sort of philosophical urban gorilla hanging around in the middle of Athens, asking these peculiar questions of everybody - important people, young men, slaves - questions that had to do with ultimately what's the life that's worth living. And Plato was one of the young men who hung around him, a very aristocratic young man, came from a very old, important family. — Rebecca Goldstein

Benedict (Cumberbatch, who is playing Sherlock) looks amazing. He's still got a Sherlockian silhouette, with a large overcoat, but in a classic cut. Watson dresses with an urban elegance, a touch of old school dashing, giving a feeling of both the military and medical profession. I suppose it's something they have in common as well. They're a bit metrosexual. — Martin Freeman

A couple of months ago someone had tried to hand William the old story about there being a dog in the city that could talk. That was the third time this year. William had explained that it was an urban myth. It was always a friend of a friend who had heard it talk, and it was never anyone who had seen the dog. The dog in front of William didn't look as if it could talk, but it did look as if it could swear. There — Terry Pratchett

I've always been interested in the Greek tragedies. A few years back, I re-read a translation of the 'The Oresteia,' and that stayed with me, and slowly this idea of using some of those old legends and plays to tell a new story about modern urban life began to form. — Peter Milligan

She never even wore stockings; just those bullet proof tights that you see on old maids. — Poppet

Pain is an old friend who left briefly and has now returned. Starvation without sustenance, I had grown acquaint. Satiety was a stranger who invaded my deepest being, and now I cannot live without. — Melanie A. Gabbard

After centuries of silence, someone or something was lying outside on the stone step . . .

"Are you deaf?" Death asked arriving abruptly with screams and cries and a fetid smell of rotting matter filling the room.

"Why are you here?" the Old Crone asked, knowing the answer before she asked the question. "Go away."

"When someone knocks you're supposed to open the door!" Death said, coughing as though she had swallowed a lot of water.

"What are you doing here?" the Old Crone asked again "and why are you amorphous? Show yourself! I don't like it when you look like nothing at all."

"Open the door!" Death rasped, appearing as a drowned cat coughing up minnows and river detritus. "Our future depends upon it! — Denny Taylor

The County Jail looked like a tall, forbidding elementary school. Seven stories of dirty brown brick, one hundred years old and now operating at 330 percent of capacity. — Richard Price

When I was three years old and in my mother's arms, she looked down at me and said, "Son, the way I'm taking care of you now, when you get old, always have a woman to take care of you like this." Dig this! All I'm goin' do is rest and dress, buy gasoline and lean. I'm goin' buy diamond rings and have the best of everything. I'm goin' pimp whores. — Donald Goines