Quotes & Sayings About Shopping Malls

All the shopping malls and restaurants and airports are riddled with low-fidelity loudspeakers, which apparently have developed the ability to reproduce by themselves; these are all connected to a special programming service called Music That Nobody Really Likes, and you cannot get away from it. — Dave Barry

Unless you live in Indonesia, there should be several malls within five miles of your home. It makes no difference whatsoever which one you go to: Under federal law, all malls in the United States must have the same 42 chain stores. — Dave Barry

The most important fact about our shopping malls, as distinct from the ordinary shopping centers where we go for our groceries, is that we do not need most of what they sell, not even for our pleasure or entertainment, not really even for a sensation of luxury. Little in them is essential to our survival, our work, or our play, and the same is true of the boutiques that multiply on our streets. — Henry Fairlie

I can fly around the world in one night. I can wink and go up a chimney in a split second. I can be in 500 shopping malls on the same weekend. I can even fit enough gifts for the entire world into one tiny sleigh pulled by eight tiny reindeer, but I CANNOT FIX THIS CONFOUNDED COMPUTER! — Bobbi A. Chukran

Malls in the late forties and early fifties were risky. Suburban customers still believed in making major purchases in the central business districts of cities and towns, where they expected to find the greatest selection of merchandise and the most competitive prices. After the tax laws of 1954, this changed. Shopping mall developers were among the biggest beneficiaries of accelerated depreciation, and they most often located projects where the older strips met the new interchanges of major projects. With the new tax write-offs, over 98 percent of malls made money for their investors. — Dolores Hayden

I've been going to shopping malls since I was on General Hospital. — Richard Simmons

Deep down inside we know that the best gifts don't come from catalogs or shopping malls. They don't come in brightly-colored packages or fancy envelopes and they're not sitting under a tree somewhere ... The best gifts come from the heart. They come when we look at each other, REALLY look at each other and say 'You mean a lot to me' or 'I'm so glad you're a part of my life.' A gift like that will never go out of style or be forgotten or be returned for a different size. A gift like that can change the world. — Ron Atchison

The survivors by and large went on with their lives.
Three of them committed suicide.
An unknown number found their way to alcohol and drugs.
None were unscathed.
But most found a way to survive, as they had for so long alone. They rediscovered their families; they attended school and church; they attended counseling sessions. They walked through shopping malls in wonder. They were occasionally seen to break down crying in the middle of a grocery store. — Michael Grant

I been to many malls from state to state,But I've never been in, say, one this great.I hate to say, about the other shopping centers that's left,But the Albee Square Mall is the doo-doo-def! — Biz Markie

The idea of living there, of not having to go back ever again to asphalt and shopping malls and modular furniture; of living there with Charles and Camilla and Henry and Francis and maybe even Bunny; of no one marrying or going home or getting a job in a town a thousand miles away or doing any of the traitorous things friends do after college; of everything remaining exactly as it was, that instant - the idea was so truly heavenly that I'm not sure I thought, even then, it could ever really happen, but I like to believe I did. — Donna Tartt

Uncontrollable consumerism has become a watchword of our culture despite regular and compelling calls for its end. The United States has more malls than high schools; Americans spend more time shopping than reading ... Some of the most insightful writing about the American character over the nation's history has been about neither freedom nor democracy but about the crazed impulse to acquire things. — Anna Quindlen

We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls. — Bill Bryson

But I grew to love these spontaneous gatherings in shopping malls, university bookstores, and specialty bookshops that couldn't be replaced by the big chains, all the spaces with coffee, comfortable chairs, and the presence of books that allow people to browse and discover interests they didn't know they had. — Gloria Steinem

How to Anesthetize theM asses [10w]
Build more shopping malls and get rid of the internet. — Beryl Dov

You want each city to be different, not just see the same shopping malls and stores wherever you go. That's not healthy. — Greg Lake

I think participating in GISHWHES is a crash course in facing our fears: people go to crowded shopping malls wearing scuba gear, order from a fast food restaurant in Shakespearean verse or jump out of airplanes among many other tasks. — Misha Collins

Partly for this reason Sir Thomas Gresham had recently built the Royal Exchange, the most fabulous commercial building of its day. (Gresham is traditionally associated with Gresham's law - that bad money drives out good - which he may or may not actually have formulated.) Modeled on the Bourse in Antwerp, the Exchange contained 150 small shops, making it one of the world's first shopping malls, but its primary purpose and virtue was that for the first time it allowed City merchants - some four thousand of them - to conduct their business indoors out of the rain. We may marvel that they waited so long to escape the English weather, but there we are. — Bill Bryson

If we operate with a belief in long sweeps of time, we build cathedrals; if we operate from fiscal quarter to fiscal quarter, we build ugly shopping malls. — Stephen Nachmanovitch

In the traditional modernist planning that created the suburbs, you put residential buildings in suburban neighborhoods, office spaces into brain parks and retail in shopping malls. But you fail to exploit the possibility of symbiosis or synthesis that way. — Bjarke Ingels

Is he one of them now? Frustrated, stuck, self-watching, looking for a means of connection, a way to break out. After Oswald, men in America are no longer required to lead lives of quiet desperation. You apply for a credit card, buy a handgun, travel through cities, suburbs and shopping malls, anonymous, anonymous, looking for a chance to take a shot at the first puffy empty famous face, just to let people know there is someone out there who reads the papers. — Don DeLillo

Lives with no more sense of spiritual meaning than that provided by shopping malls, ordinary television, and stagnant workplaces are barren lives indeed. Spirituality enriches culture. — Marianne Williamson

Rejoy has several meanings, the first two of which are somewhat noble, and more than somewhat boring. The third meaning, however, is probably the most applicable one for most people, as so many of us cannot seem to enjoy things unless we possess them. Which explains the existence of shopping malls. Remord — Ammon Shea

I am a futility. The life of prayer begins with that. And God is not a comfort, to be offered like Kleenex. God is a poisoned sea, with broken syringes washing up on the beach. God is shopping malls stretching to the horizon and warplanes in the sky. God is a flat tire in a rainstorm and beer cans in the ditch, a bottle shattered on a highway and the taste of gunmetal in your mouth. — Tim Farrington

For what might happen if we lift
the codicils on belching?
If sex were permitted in the shopping malls? If people
were allowed to sing arias
from Don Giovanni, loudly and out of tune, waiting in line
at Department of Motor Vehicles? — Lucia Perillo

My father managed shopping malls when I was a kid, and my high school job was to dress up in an elf costume and take photos of kids sitting on Santa Claus's lap. — Karen Duffy

And from mayors to average citizens, we have heard expressed a shared belief in a direct causal relationship between the character of the physical environment and the social health of families and the community at large. For all of the household conveniences, cars, and shopping malls, life seems less satisfying to most Americans, particularly in the ubiquitous middle-class suburbs, where a sprawling, repetitive, and forgettable landscape has supplanted the original promise of suburban life with a hollow imitation. — Andres Duany

Children are perceptive, and if they see leaders and parents talk with boredom and apathy about faith yet become overtly passionate about sports teams or shopping malls, they will think the sport or the mall is more attractive than Jesus. — Matt Chandler

It's time to stop building the shopping malls, the prisons, the stadiums and other tributes to all of our collective failures. It is time that we start building living monuments to hope and possibility. — Majora Carter

Well morning came, and it dressed the sky in a lovely yellow gown. Shopping malls are opening in that narrow hallway of downtown, filled with people who are shopping for their lovers and their friends, singing I won't ever be lonely again — Conor Oberst

My shopping habits ... I am not very brand-conscious about clothes. I buy whatever looks good on me. Likewise, I don't just shop only in malls or high-end stores. — Virat Kohli

Like tens of millions of Americans, my parents were immigrants. They were poor and did not speak English well. They went to flea markets and sold gifts to make ends meet. Eventually, through hard work, they opened six gift stores in shopping malls. My parents achieved the American dream; they went from being poor to a home and gave my brother and me an amazing education. I wanted to serve the country that gave so much to my family. — Ted Lieu

Negative? Moi? I think realistic might be a better word. You mean to tell me we can drive all the way here from L.A. and see maybe ten thousand square miles of shopping malls, and you don't have maybe just the weentsiest inkling that something, somewhere has gone very very cuckoo? — Douglas Coupland

Who would have predicted a century ago that the richest civilizations in history would be made up of polluted tracts of suburban development dominated by the private automobile, shopping malls, and a throwaway economy? Surely, this is not the ultimate fulfillment of our destiny. — Alan Thein Durning

supervisors force professional service people to broadcast the Professional Smile? Am I the only consumer in whom high doses of such a smile produce despair? Am I the only person who's sure that the growing number of cases in which totally average-looking people suddenly open up with automatic weapons in shopping malls and insurance offices and medical complexes and McDonald'ses is somehow causally related to the fact that these venues are well-known dissemination-loci of the Professional Smile? — David Foster Wallace

The moment you decide that you're a grownup now, and therefore must put away foolish things like staying out all night or cruising down strange highways is the moment you will lose that ineffable glow of youth. If you don't believe me, look around. Study those people who would rather go to shopping malls than dance halls, who think the height of depravity is bidding two no trump with only fifteen points. Every single one of these people has a stringy neck. — Cynthia Heimel

In the U.S. there are 45,000 shopping malls employing 10.7 million people. The average American family of four metabolizes four million pounds of material every year to support their lifestyle. That's 11,000 lbs. a day, 7.5 lbs. a minute. — Stephanie Kaza

Everything you do on Facebook will affect what comes in your view in the future. If you like crappy things that you don't care about, you'll see more crappy brands that you don't care about in the future, and it might even affect your experiences when you walk into bars, churches, schools, shopping malls, etc. — Robert Scoble

I always try and mix High Street finds into my looks. It really doesn't matter how much something costs, it's the way you wear it! Fashion is about self expression, having fun, and occasionally being a little disposable. I really enjoy lots of stores that are found at local shopping malls. French Connection, Zara, and Topshop always interpret the fashions direct from the catwalk at affordable prices. This playsuit from Hoss Intropia is delicate, super sexy, and has a lingerie feel. I'd throw on a super soft, chunky cardigan and a pair of flat gladiator sandals. — Cat Deeley

On average the total walking of an American these days
that's walking of all types: from car to office, from office to car, around the supermarket and shopping malls
adds up to 1.4 miles a week, barely 350 yards a day. That's ridiculous. — Bill Bryson

Any business that wanted to set up shop inside the OASIS had to rent or purchase virtual real estate (which Morrow dubbed "surreal estate") from GSS. Anticipating this, the company had set aside Sector One as the simulation's designated business zone and began to sell and rent millions of blocks of surreal estate there. City-sized shopping malls were erected in the blink of an eye, and storefronts spread across planets like time-lapse footage of mold devouring an orange. Urban development had never been so easy. — Ernest Cline

But private lands development around the periphery of the parks - Grand Teton and Yellowstone - is a crucial issue because if those private lands are transformed from open pastures, meadow, forest land to suburbs, to little ranchettes, to shopping malls, to roads, to Starbucks - if those places are all settled for the benefit of humans, then the elk are not going to be able to migrate in and out of Yellowstone Park anymore. And if the elk can't migrate into the park, then that creates problems for the wolves, for the grizzlies, for a lot of other creatures. — David Quammen

Till now, my conception of love has been based entirely on what I have seen in Hindi films, where the hero and the heroine make eye contact, and whoosh, some strange chemistry sets their hearts beating and their vocal chords tingling, and the next you see of them they are off singing songs in Swiss Villages and American shopping malls. — Vikas Swarup

Every twenty minutes on the Appalachian Trail, Katz and I walked farther than the average American walks in a week. For 93 percent of all trips outside the home, for whatever distance or whatever purpose, Americans now get in a car. On average, the total walking of an American these days - that's walking of all types: from car to office, from office to car, around the supermarket and shopping malls - adds up to 1.4 miles a week ... That's ridiculous. — Bill Bryson

I think that what's perceived as punk out in shopping malls or in chain stores or on MTV has almost nothing to do with what punk is about. — Jello Biafra

Shopping malls are liquid TVs for the end of the twentieth century. A whole micro-circuitry of desire, ideology and expenditure for processed bodies drifting through the cyber-space of ultracapitalism. — Arthur Kroker

Citizenship means standing up for the lives that gun violence steals from us each day. I have seen the courage of parents, students, pastors, and police officers all over this country who say 'we are not afraid,' and I intend to keep trying, with or without Congress, to help stop more tragedies from visiting innocent Americans in our movie theaters, shopping malls, or schools like Sandy Hook. — Barack Obama

Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless. — Noam Chomsky

America is a great disappointment to me. As I said in one of my books, other societies create civilisations; we build shopping malls. — Bill Bryson

Cities may now bulldoze private citizens' homes, farms and small businesses to make way for shopping malls or other developments. — Bob Goodlatte

Deserts possess a particular magic, since they have exhausted their own futures, and are thus free of time. Anything erected there, a city, a pyramid, a motel, stands outside time. It's no coincidence that religious leaders emerge from the desert. Modern shopping malls have much the same function. A future Rimbaud, Van Gogh or Adolf Hitler will emerge from their timeless wastes. — J.G. Ballard

It's not like I'm hanging out at shopping malls or going to celebrity golf tournaments. I'm so in my own little world. I got my dog, my music, my brother, a couple of friends. — Jared Leto

Before Sept. 11, the idea that Americans would voluntarily agree to live their lives under the gaze of a network of biometric surveillance cameras, peering at them in government buildings, shopping malls, subways and stadiums, would have seemed unthinkable, a dystopian fantasy of a society that had surrendered privacy and anonymity. — Jeffrey Rosen

Roads get wider and busier and less friendly to pedestrians. And all of the development based around cars, like big sprawling shopping malls. Everything seems to be designed for the benefit of the automobile and not the benefit of the human being. — Bill Bryson

I want my prayers, and the prayers of my friends, to ricochet off the rock faces of mountains, reverberate down the corridors of shopping malls, sound ocean deeps, water arid deserts, find a foothold in fetid swamps, encounter poets as they search for the accurate word, mingle their fragrance with wildflowers in Alpine Meadows, sing with the looms of Canadian lakes. — Eugene H. Peterson

I love consumerism, TV culture, shopping malls. There's nothing I'd ever buy, but I like being there. It's wacky. — John Lydon

I also love visiting the malls but not to do shopping. The only things I enjoy shopping are clothes and shoes. I have many pairs of shoes — Tevin Campbell

Tonight the city is full of morgues, and all the toilets are overflowing. There's shopping malls coming out of the walls, as we walk out among the manure. That's why I pay no mind. — Beck

People are bored. They're dead! Go to a shopping mall and check out the faces. I did this for years - I'd drive out to the malls on weekends and just sit there watching people, trying to figure it out. What's missing? What do they need? What's the next step? And then I got it: imagination. We've lost the ability to make things up. We've farmed out that job to the entertainment industry, and we sit around and drool on ourselves while they do it for us. — Jennifer Egan

Essex raised its ugly head. When i was a scholarship boy at the local grammar, son of a city-hall toiler on the make, this country was synonymous with liberty, success, and Cambridge. Now look at it. Shopping malls and housing estates pursue their creeping invasion of our ancient land. A North Sea wind snatched frilly clouds in its teeth and scarpered off to the midlands. The countryside proper began at last. My mother had a cousin out here, her family had a big house. I think they moved to Winnipeg for a better life. There! There, in the shadow of that DIY warehouse, once stood a row of walnut trees where me and Pip Oakes - a childhood chum who died aged thirteen under the wheels of an oil tanker - varnished a canoe one summer and sailed it alone the Say. Sticklebacks in jars,. There, right there, around that bend we lit a fire and cooked beans and potatoes wrapped in silver foil! Come back, oh, come back! Is one glimpse all I get? — David Mitchell

Swingers are all from the suburbs and consequently brain-addled by car pools, shopping malls, and welcome wagons. — Cynthia Heimel

When you see the Escalades and the Hummers driving down the street, at least in Los Angeles, this dry, flat desert with shopping malls, when you see someone driving one of those through this you're like, 'You are definitely part of the problem.' — Henry Rollins

For me, the best thing about Cyberpunk is that it taught me how to enjoy shopping malls, which used to terrify me. Now I just imagine the whole thing is two miles below the moon's surface, and that half the people's right-brains have been eaten by roboticized steel rats. And suddenly it's interesting again. — Rudy Rucker

A pioneer family lived beyond the reach of shopping malls ... — Stephen Baxter

Neoliberal democracy. Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless.
In sum, neoliberalism is the immediate and foremost enemy of genuine participatory democracy, not just in the United States but across the planet, and will be for the foreseeable future. — Noam Chomsky

But in the service when we recite 'They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old', we both cry. For different reasons. I have become swept up in this. These wiry old lions. Their properness. Their improperness. Their tidy jackets. Their name tags. Their risky humour. Their imagination. Their no shit. I am ashamed of what we haven't done with our freedom and their victories. Living off the fat of the land. With our central heating and our power steering and our fast food and our leaf-blowers and our shopping malls. My tears are self-indulgent: about loss, the world; and about me probably. While Dad is just having a cry. — Keggie Carew

We're not going to persuade people in the developing world to go without, but neither can we afford a planet on which everyone lives like an American. Billions more people living in suburbs and driving SUVs to shopping malls is a recipe for planetary suicide. We can't even afford to continue that way of life ourselves. — Alex Steffen

We skip school and we ditch chores. We haunt shopping malls and grocery stores. House parties grow dull, but Amy's boyfriend is a dealer and we find ways to pass the time. — Kris Kidd

We're dabbling in eugenics all the time, breeding ideal crops to replace less aesthetic or nutritious or hardy varieties; leveling forests to graze cattle or erect shopping malls and condos; planting groves of a few familiar trees that homeowners and industries prefer. — Diane Ackerman

It's a silent witness to the Lord when people go into shopping malls, and everyone is bustling, and you see that Chick-fil-A is closed. — S. Truett Cathy

Shopping malls rarely have any windows on the outside. There is a good reason for this: if you could see the world beyond the window you would be able to orientate yourself and might not get lost. Shopping malls have maps that are unreadable even to the most skilled cartographer. There is a good reason for this: if you could read the map you would be able to find your way to the shop you meant to go without getting lost. Shopping malls look rather the same whichever way you turn. There is a reason for this too: shopping malls are built to disorientate you, to spin you around, to free you from the original petty purpose for which you came and make you wander like Cain past rows and rows of shops thinking to yourself, "Ooh! I should actually go in there and get something. Might as well seeing as I'm here." And this strange mental process, this freeing of the mind from all sense of purpose or reason, is known to retail analysts as the Gruen transfer. — Mark Forsyth