The City Watch Quotes & Sayings

NO, WE DO NOT HAVE PENS!
Bring your own. You'll need them. You see, like every other department in the city, Records runs on Almighty Forms. There are forms that tell the Night Mayor's office what we hunters are doing - starting an investigation, ending one, or reaching various points along the way. There are forms that make things happen, from installing rat traps to getting lab work done. There are forms with which to requisition peep-hunting equipment, from tiger cages to Tasers. (The form for commandeering a genuine NYC garbage truck may be thirty-four pages long, but one day I will think of some reason to fill it out, I swear to you.) There are even forms that activate other forms or switch them off, that cause other forms to mutate, thus bringing newly formed forms into the world. Put together, all these forms are the vast spiral of information that defines us, guides our growth, and makes sure our future looks like our past - they are the DNA of the Night Watch. — Scott Westerfeld

Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord builds the city, the guard keeps watch in vain. — Anonymous

Isabelle and Jace had left the topic of dead Shadowhunters behind and had moved on to something Jace apparently found even more horrifyingIsabelle's date with Simon.
"I can't believe he took you to an actual restaurant." Jace was on his feet now, putting away the floor mats and training gear while Isabelle leaned against the wall and played with her new gloves. "I assumed his idea of a date would be making you watch him play World of Warcraft with his nerd friends."
"I," Clary pointed out, "am one of his nerd friends, thank you. — Cassandra Clare

It wasn't a city, it was a process, a weight on the world that distorted the land for hundreds of miles around. People who'd never see it in their whole life nevertheless spent that life working for it. Thousands and thousands of green acres were part of it, forests were part of it. It drew in and consumed ...
... and gave back the dung from its pens, and the soot from its chimneys, and steel, and saucepans, and all the tools by which its food was made. And also clothes, and fashions, and ideas, and interesting vices, songs, and knowledge, and something which, if looked at in the right light, was called civilization. That was what civilization meant. It meant the city. — Terry Pratchett

If he were alive he would be sitting on a park bench with a mug of hot coffee reading his favorite book for the fifth or tenth time, glancing up now and then to watch the people stroll by, and the city would smmile and lean in and whisper: That bench was shaped for your body. That book was written for your mind. This city was built for your life, and all these people were born to share it with you. You are part of this, living man. Go live. — Isaac Marion

I think they'd barely recognize us as brothers and sisters. If we told them, church is on Sundays, and we have an awesome band...if the found out 1/6th of the earth's population claimed to be Christians, I'm not sure they could reconcile the suffering happening on our watch while we're living in excess...

But listen, early church, we have a monthly event called 'Mocha chicks', we have choir practice every Wednesday, we organize retreats with door prizes, we're raising $3 million for an outdoor amphitheater, we have catchy t-shirts, we don't smoke or say the f-word, we go to bible study every semester...

the local church would be the heartbeat of the city. — Jen Hatmaker

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

The water glittered under the moon's careful watch, and, in the distance, steeples cut stark black silhouettes into the landscape of the distant city. — Katherine McIntyre

Each day, we feel more distant from each other, more alone, all while being surrounded by millions. Each day we watch as our city turns into a desert, one in which we are all lost, looking for that oasis we like to call "love". The more we wait, the more everything and everyone looks like a grain of sand escaping between our fingers before vanishing into the wind. How do we find something or someone we can no longer see, but which is right there before us? And how do we hold on to what is most precious in life? — Gabriel Ba

The Captain of the Watch says if you're still in the City by sunrise he will personally have you buried alive. — Terry Pratchett

This time as we ascend, I watch the world sinking below us. I watch the way the city fades into sand that gets washed by the ocean. — Lauren DeStefano

Curiously, while drone operators are perhaps the safest of all combat troops physically, they have among the highest rates of depression and post-traumatic stress in the military and national security services. Sitting at a video console in Colorado or New York City, killing someone six thousand miles away and then collecting the kids at gymnastics or football practice, having dinner and sitting down to watch Dancing with the Stars in your suburban den was disorienting beyond belief. — Jeffery Deaver

Beyond the wall of the unreal city ... there is another world waiting for you. It is the old true world of the deserts, the mountains, the forests, the islands, the shores, the open plains. Go there. Be there. Walk gently and quietly deep within it. And then
May your trails be dim, lonesome, stony, narrow, winding and only slightly uphill. May the wind bring rain for the slickrock potholes fourteen miles on the other side of yonder blue ridge. May God's dog serenade your campfire, may the rattlesnake and the screech owl amuse your reverie, may the Great Sun dazzle your eyes by day and the Great Bear watch over you by night. — Edward Abbey

Corporal Carrot, Ankh-Morpork City Guard (Night Watch), sat down in his nightshirt, took up his pencil, sucked the end for a moment, and then wrote: — Anonymous

When we get the remote Russian village online, what will get people to the Internet is not going to be reports from Human Rights Watch. It's going to be pornography, 'Sex and the City,' or maybe funny videos of cats. — Evgeny Morozov

When you visit a foreign city you are in it, but not of it, separated by a glass wall. Once, while a student, I was getting dressed in my ground-floor room when a family of Italians crossed the grass to watch, as if I were laid on for their amusement and instruction. — Simon Hoggart

There she is."
Alec spotted his sister and waved her over, looking relieved.
"Over here. And watch out for the phouka."
"Watch out for the phouka?" Jace repeated, glancing toward a thin brown-skinned man in a green paisley vest who eyed Isabelle thoughtfully as she walked by.
"He pinched me when I passed him earlier," Alec said stiffly.
"In a highly personal area."
"I hate to break it to you, but if he's interested in your highly personal areas, he probably isn't interested in your sister's. — Cassandra Clare

As I travel the country for away games, I meet kids fighting cancer in almost every city. They visit the ballpark, and I invite them onto the field so we can chat and then watch the game. — Jon Lester

Yet torture is above all an art, an artistic discipline just like literature , cinema, or contemporary dance. All detained in the City-State ghettos bitterly missed the torturers of yesteryears, those monsters who worked with the precision of a Swiss watch-maker. — Fiston Mwanza Mujila

But there was nothing. No village or town as far as her eyes could strain. Nowhere for her saviours to come from and take her to; just fields and trees and the weeping arc of the river Greave all the way to the horizon. Just like in the books, Greaveburn was all there was; building and building until streets were foundations, roofs were floors, constantly climbing away from itself. now that Abrasia saw it, her dream of escape crumbled completely like an ancient map in her fingers. The horizon was the world's edge and there was nothing beyond it but mist and falling.

Greaveburn stood alone on this little circle of earth, the river running around and into itself like a snake eating its tail. And Abrasia was doomed to watch the sun and stars trade places for all eternity. — Craig Hallam

I just finished an episode of a new show called 'Century City.' It's like 'Law & Order' set in the future, and I have a very dramatic role in that. I have to sob and weep and wail. It was very hard. When it was done, I was like, 'OK, time to watch 'SpongeBob!' — Cayden Boyd

If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep. — G.K. Chesterton

The snow had done what even wizards and the Watch couldn't do, which was clean up Ankh-Morpork. It hadn't had time to get dirty. In the morning it'd probably look as though the city had been covered in coffee meringue, but for now it mounded the bushes and trees in pure white. — Terry Pratchett

Sometimes she'd just walk around the city alone. Watch the people, smell the food, the bus exhaust, the smoke coming up through the grating. She'd feel protected somehow, found a sense of belonging in the hectic sprawl. And the next minute she'd feel like the one who couldn't break the code, hit the right stride, catch the wave. Potholes and traffic and bums, oh my. With all the honking and the hum of movement, the living, breathing blur of noise gently pressing in on her, the great purr of the Metropolitan Cat turning into a dull roar. She'd feel so silent on the inside, her head as quiet as a stretch of sand, a cathedral silently worshipping the life that was all around her, storing it up for later when she needed some 'too much' to draw upon. — Carrie Fisher

New York is a city of conversations overheard, of people at the next restaurant table (micrometers away) checking your watch, of people reading the stories in your newspaper on the subway train. — Bill Geist

When I was young, I thought it was normal to go to sleep to the sounds of sirens. People on my block were in the biggest gang in the city. They were my close friends - they showed me the ropes, who to watch out for. — Emily Rios

Truly, the bench is a boon to idlers. Whoever first came up with the idea is a genius: free public resting places where you can take time out from the bustle and brouhaha of the city, and simply sit and watch and reflect. — Tom Hodgkinson

I used to watch the line where earth and sky met, and longed to go and seek there the key of all mysteries, thinking that I might find there a new life, perhaps some great city where life should be grander and richer - and then it struck me that life may be grand enough even in a prison. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The tension between the harsh super-ego and the ego that is subjected to it, is called by us the sense of guilt; it expresses itself as a need for punishment. Civilization, therefore, obtains mastery over the individual's dangerous desire for aggression by weakening and disarming it and by setting up an agency within him to watch over it, like a garrison in a conquered city. — Sigmund Freud

Intricacy is related to the variety of reasons for which people come to neighborhood parks. Even the same person comes for different reasons at different times; sometimes to sit tiredly, sometimes to play or to watch a game, sometimes to read or work, sometimes to show off, sometimes to fall in love, sometimes to keep an appointment, sometimes to savor the hustle of the city from a retreat, sometimes in the hope of finding acquaintances, sometimes to get closer to a bit of nature, sometimes to keep a child occupied, sometimes simply to see what offers, and almost always to be entertained by the sight of other people.
If the whole thing can be absorbed in a glance, like a good poster, and if every place looks like every other place in the park and also feels like every other place when you try it, — Jane Jacobs

Then there were long, lazy summer afternoons when there was nothing to do but read. And dream. And watch the town go by to supper. I think that is why our great men and women so often have sprung from small towns, or villages. They have had time to dream in their adolescence. No cars to catch, no matinees, no city streets, none of the teeming, empty, energy-consuming occupations of the city child. Little that is competitive, much that is unconsciously absorbed at the most impressionable period, long evenings for reading, long afternoons in the fields or woods. — Edna Ferber

The first time Dad tried Rollerblades he had a bad wipeout on the sidewalk in front of our house- his feet went flying out from under him and he bruised his tailbone. "If God had ment us to have wheels on our feet he would have put them there," he said a few minutes later, searching the linen closet for the heating pad. And whenever Derek and I sometimes Mom went ice-skating at the rink in Ashton City, Dad would watch from the benches on the sidelines. "If God had meant for us to have blades on our feet ... — Evan Kuhlman

I think the obvious answer is I was raised in New York City, so growing up, not only myself but my family, like my father, we would watch a lot of Scorsese films. — Anthony Michael Hall

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

The ballpark is the star. In the age of Tris Speaker and Babe Ruth, the era of Jimmie Foxx and Ted Williams, through the empty-seats epoch of Don Buddin and Willie Tasby and unto the decades of Carl Yastrzemski and Jim Rice, the ballpark is the star. A crazy-quilt violation of city planning principles, an irregular pile of architecture, a menace to marketing consultants, Fenway Park works. It works as a symbol of New England's pride, as a repository of evergreen hopes, as a tabernacle of lost innocence. It works as a place to watch baseball — Martin F. Nolan

But in the midst of this decaying, burning city, there are pockets of hope. It can be found in the tiny dark rooms in underground bars, where women with short hair cheer on men in dresses. It can be felt in abandoned cinemas where anonymous strangers fall in love if only for a few moments, and in the living rooms where families crowd around, drinking sweet black tea and Skyping their homesick relatives so that together they can watch the long, rambling talk shows that go on all night. — Saleem Haddad

Sometimes, with the scale of a film, it's like when I walked on the sets of "The Matrix," especially in "Reloaded," there was the city square, or in "Revolutions" with some of the machine world, you're like, "Wow, this is a big playground," which is fun to watch. But the acting experience and the collaborating and creating the world, working on the piece, they're the same joys. — Keanu Reeves

My father once told me about a city on the other side of the sky.

Gods watch over us from there. — Mervin Ignacio

Civilization is an experiment, a very recent way of life in the human career, and it has a habit of walking into what I am calling progress traps. A small village on good land beside a river is a good idea; but when the village grows into a city and paves over the good land, it becomes a bad idea. While prevention might have been easy, a cure may be impossible: a city isn't easily moved. This human inability to foresee
or to watch out for
long-range consequences may be inherent to our kind, shaped by the millions of years when we lived from hand to mouth by hunting and gathering. It may also be little more than a mix of inertia, greed, and foolishness encouraged by the shape of the social pyramid. The concentration of power at the top of large-scale societies gives the elite a vested interest in the status quo; they continue to prosper in darkening times long after the environment and general populace begin to suffer. (109) — Ronald Wright

Capture of Nanking Rain and a windstorm rage blue and yellow over Chung the bell mountain as a million peerless troops cross the Great River. The peak is a coiled dragon, the city a crouching tiger more dazzling than before. The sky is spinning and the earth upside down. We are elated yet we must use our courage to chase the hopeless enemy. We must not stoop to fame like the overlord Hsiang Yu. If heaven has feeling it will grow old and watch our seas turn into mulberry fields. — Mao Zedong

Angua wondered if there was ever a time when anyone in the Watch was ever, really, off duty. She couldn't imagine Sergeant Colon in civilian clothes. When you were a Watchman, you were a Watchman all the time, which was a bit of a bargain for the city since it only paid you to be a Watchman for ten hours of every day. — Terry Pratchett

Syn tightened his seat belt as God drove like a damn lunatic through the city. He was now on the interstate doing over a hundred miles an hour.

"If the person's already dead, what's the damn rush, Cash?" Day grumbled, obviously not liking God's driving either.

God ignored his passengers and swerved over four lanes, cutting off an eighteen-wheeler and just missing the barrier as he took the exit ramp at seventy.

"Got a real heavy foot there, don't you Lieutenant?" Syn gritted through clenched teeth.

God let out a grunt as sharp green eyes caught Syn's reflection in the rearview mirror.

Please just watch the fucking road. — A.E. Via

At first, sending the confession by real mail had felt like a genius device. I would not have to sit by my phone and watch for the signs that indicated it had been sent and seen. Slim but solid paper would, I hoped, convey me better. Now I had to consider the very real frailties of the system. Ludicrous, in fact, to entrust something of such magnitude to a mailman. A perfect stranger. I looked up stories of nefarious New York mailmen. There was one who has willfully upturned the lives of ordinary people like myself by hoarding 40,000 pieces of undelivered mail. The city was crawling with thieves and malcontents. — Olivia Sudjic

The city was still .... Soon the machinery would start working again, not out of any sense of purpose, but like a watch that is wound daily by someone's hand. Almost without any choice in the matter, people would embark upon the minute frustrations and satisfactions of their daily lives. It was in this moment of postponement that the azaan was heard, neither announcing the day nor keeping it a secret. — Amit Chaudhuri

They haven't killed us yet, I say, and I imagine that one day I will fly a plane over Portland, over Rochester, over every fenced-in city in the whole country, and I will bomb and bomb and bomb, and watch all their buildings smoldering to dust, and all those people melting and bleeding into flame, and I will see how they like it.
If you take, we will take back. Steal from us, and we will rob you blind. When you squeeze, we will hit.
This is the way the world is made now. — Lauren Oliver

London was a graveyard haunted by dead faiths. A city and a landscape. A market laid on feudalisms. Gathering and hunting, little pockets of alterity, too, but most of all in the level Billy had come to live in a tilework of fiefdoms, theocratic duchies, zones and spheres of influences, over each of which some local despot, some criminal pope, sat watch. It was all who-knew-whom, gave access to what, greased which palms on what route to where. — China Mieville

I'll watch the night turn light blue, it's not the same without you cause it takes two to whisper quietly — Owl City

Margaret stood all alone at her first witch-burning. She had on her new blue cap and her sister's shawl, and she stood by herself, waiting. She had long ago given up on finding her sister and brother-in-law in the crowd, and was now content to watch alone. She felt a very pleasant fear and a crying excitement over the burning; she had lived all her life in the country and now, staying with her sister in the city, she was being introduced to the customs of society. — Shirley Jackson

The strange, wonderful stories of Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain introduce us to the tremendously gifted Kirsten Menger-Anderson, a writer whose subject is nothing less than the diagnosis and cure of the human malady. We follow twelve generations of New York City's Steenwycks family through their forays into phrenology, mesmerism, radium therapy and similar misadventures, a historically rich narrative that Menger-Anderson delivers in striking, elegant prose and with a sure eye for detail. This is a remarkable debut by a writer to watch. — Ben Fountain

Aren't they supposed to be hiring someone else to train me full-time anyway?"
"Yes," he said, getting up and pulling her to her feet along with him," and I'm worried that if you get into the habit of making out with your instructors, you'll wind up making out with him, too."
" Don't be sexist. They could find me a female instructor."
"In that case you have my permission to make out with her, as long as I can watch. — Cassandra Clare

When I have trouble sleeping, I'll read, watch old episodes of 'Sex and the City,' or dance around my house. Music helps me wind down. — Zoe Kravitz

And from the top of the building I look down upon the world and see the crowds of people in the city I have made and the world that I have created.
This universe, my universe, dies with me. I will jump and I will die and yet, I will live, as I always do.
I will live and die and murder, a massacre of my people. And I watch as the girl's bare feet leap and her naked body falls. Down, down, down, she falls. She drops. Into the fires of a hell of my making. — Emma Rose Kraus

I noticed Wahid's boys, all three thin with dirt-caked faces and short-cropped brown hair under their skull caps, stealing furative glances at my digital wristwatch.

...I unsnapped the wristwatch and gave it to the youngest of the three boys. He muttered a sheepish "Tashakor."
"It tells you the time in any city in the world," I told him. The boys, nodding politely passing the watch between them, taking turns trying it on. But they lost interest and, soon the watch sat abandoned on the straw mat.

...I understood now why the boys hadn't shown any interest in the watch. They hadn't been staring at the watch at all. They'd been staring at my food. — Khaled Hosseini

Jude continued his walk homeward alone, pondering so deeply that he forgot to feel timid. He suddenly grew older. It had been the yearning of his heart to find something to anchor on, to cling to - for some place which he could call admirable. Should he find that place in this city if he could get there? Would it be a spot in which, without fear of farmers, or hindrance, or ridicule, he could watch and wait, and set himself to some mighty undertaking like the men of old of whom he had heard? As the halo had been to his eyes when gazing at it a quarter of an hour earlier, so was the spot mentally to him as he pursued his dark way. — Thomas Hardy

Sing now, ye people of the Tower of Anor, for the Realm of Sauron is ended for ever, and the Dark Tower is thrown down. Sing and rejoice, ye people of the Tower of Guard, for your watch hath not been in vain, and the Black Gate is broken, and your King hath passed through, and he is victorious. Sing and be glad, all ye children of the West, for your King shall come again, and he shall dwell among you all the days of your life. And the Tree that was withered shall be renewed, and he shall plant it in the high places, and the City shall be blessed. Sing all ye people! — J.R.R. Tolkien

It was actually a lot more helpful to have Calvin Hart, a cop, as my template. He was also my technical advisor on Shaft. This time, I kinda got to go to Jersey City with him, and hang around, and watch him interact with other cops, people in the projects, and see what it means to be him. People call him 'Big Daddy' and he's this larger-than-life hero to a lot of people. — Samuel L. Jackson

As the Little House settled down on her new foundation, she smiled happily. Once again she could watch the sun and moon and stars. Once again she could watch Spring and Summer and Fall and Winter come and go. Once again she was lived in and taken care of. Never again would she be curious about the city ... Never again would she want to live there ... The stars twinkled above her ... A new moon was coming up ... It was Spring ... And all was quiet and peaceful in the country. — Virginia Lee Burton

Honestly, I think winning changes all of that. It doesn't matter where you are - it could be Timbuktu - if you win, people will watch, they'll follow and they'll support. It's my responsibility to put a team on the floor that will win, and that attracts players. Look at the teams that have been successful in the NBA. Yes, you have big, glamorous cities like L.A. But Miami has won, and so has San Antonio. Oklahoma City is a very successful team. They're not the biggest markets. — Masai Ujiri

From the window, I watch the city and the freeway. In the distance, the sky-rises look like mystic spires, unbearably close and far. I want to pick them up and eat them. I want to scream out loud sometimes, but I never do. — Brenna Yovanoff

They watch her when she comes to City Hall, they watch her at the social events, they watch the way she walks, hips rolling with no suggestion of provocation but with every sense that she knows more than any of the rest. A woman like that, they seem to be thinking, a woman like that has lived.
Their wives from Orange County, they come from Minnesota or Dallas or St.Louis. They come from places with families, with sagging mothers and fathers with dead eyes and heavy-hanging brows. They carry their own promise of future slackness and clipped lips and demands. They have sisters, sisther with more babies, babies with sweet saliva hanging and more appliance and with husbands with better salaries and two cars and club membership. They iron in housedresses in front of the television set or by the radio, steam rising, matting their faces, as the children with the damp necks cling on them, sticky-handed. They are this. And Alice ... and Alice ... — Megan Abbott

Christ want to point this out and to warn His followers that in the world everyone should live as though he were alone and should consider His Word and preaching as the very greatest thing on earth, thinking this way to himself: I see my neighbor and the whole city, and yes the whole world, living differently. All those who are great or noble or rich, the princes and the lords, are allied with it. Nevertheless I have an ally who is greater than all of them, namely, Christ and His Word. When I am all alone, therefore, I am still not alone. Because I have the Word of God, I have Christ with me, together with all the dear angels and all the saints since the beginning of the world. Actually there is a bigger crowd and a more glorious procession surrounding me than there could be in the whole world now. Only I cannot see it with my eyes, and I have to watch and bear the offense of having so many people forsake me or live and act in opposition to me. — Martin Luther

Just as I'm about to continue walking along the shoreline, the left third of the iceberg breaks off suddenly and crashes violently, like a high-rise apartment building imploding in the heart of the city. Tears roll down my face uncontrollably as I watch the two distinct halves of the iceberg drift further and further apart from each other. It's devastating to watch something that seems so strong and unbreakable crumble in an instant. Even more devastating is the feeling that there's nothing I can do about it. — Shannon Mullen

Thack seemed to sort something out for a moment.
"Sometimes I watch him when he's playing with Harry or digging in the yard. And I think: This is it, this is the guy I've waited for all my life. Then this other voice tells me not to get used to it, that it'll only hurt more later. It's funny. You're feeling this enormous good fortune and waiting for it to be over at the same time."
"You seem happy," Brian ventured.
"I am."
"Well ... that's a lot. I envy you that."
Thack shrugged. "All we've got is now, I guess. But that's all anybody gets. If we wasted that time being scared ... "
"Absolutely. — Armistead Maupin

Every man needs a good, solid watch. My favorite watch is the Presidential Rolex. I own many watches, but this one is usually the one on my wrist. I buy mine in the Diamond District in New York City. Classic. — French Montana

But the fantasy kingdom and trappings of success soon lost their luster, as I discovered that the most prestigious and remunerative of my resume's way stations was also the most tedious and unfulfilling I had ever experienced. This paradox only made me more morose about modernity. Why was I going to watch my hairline recede in front of two-thousand-line spreadsheets staring at me from cold, glowing monitors? Why was everyone in my office apparently so happy to be spending so many hours there, when the things they really cared about - people, pets, pastimes - were all relegated to a few photographs on their desks? That seemed to be the formula: spend the best years of your life in an office with photos of what you really care about. — Zack Love

So now I lye by Day and toss or rave by Night, since the ratling and perpetual Hum of the Town deny me rest: just as Madness and Phrensy are the vapours which rise from the lower Faculties, so the Chaos of the Streets reaches up even to the very Closet here and I am whirl'd about by cries of Knives to Grind and Here are your Mouse-Traps. I was last night about to enter the Shaddowe of Rest when a Watch-man, half-drunken, thumps at the Door with his Past Three-a-clock and his Rainy Wet Morning. And when at length I slipp'd into Sleep I had no sooner forgot my present Distemper than I was plunged into a worse: I dreamd my self to be lying in a small place under ground, like unto a Grave, and my Body was all broken while others sung. And there was a Face that did so terrifie me that I had like to have expired in my Dream. Well, I will say no more. — Peter Ackroyd

Just because you can watch half-nude women on afternoon television or gay men kissing on the streets of nearly any major city does not mean America is free, as complacent liberals might think, much less too free, as conservatives often suggest. Just because most dissidents are left alone doesn't mean there is no police state, for that would be convenient indeed for the police statists: the idea that people ought not complain so long as they have the right to do so. — Anthony Gregory

Watch for subjects as you go but the city or the country. Keep your eyes and ears open, and you will hear and see angels. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Wordlessly they settled on a third-story ledge near Patriarch's Pond, of the roof across from Luce's window, where they used to watch her sleep. The memory would be fresher in Daniil's mind, but the faint recollection of Luce lying dreaming under the covers still sent a warm rush across Daniel's wings.
Both were somber.In the bombed-out city, it was sad and ironic that her building had been spared when she hadn't. They stood in silence in the cold night,both carefully tucking back their wings so that they wouldn't accidentially touch. — Lauren Kate

I waited for the train at Coventry; I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge, To watch the three tall spires; and there I shaped The city's ancient legend into this. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

I cannot watch the city of Chicago be destroyed by petty politics and bad government. — Harold Washington

The city of the First Empire, the one upon the old island ... " Icarium waited. "Destroyed ... by your hand, Icarium. Yours is a blind rage ... a rage unequaled. It burns fierce, so fierce all your memory of what you do is obliterated. I watch you - I have watched you stirring those cold ashes, ever seeking to discover who you are, yet there I stand, at your side, bound by a vow to prevent you ever committing such an act again. You have destroyed cities, entire peoples. Once you begin killing, you cannot stop, until all before you is ... lifeless. — Steven Erikson

Even when I succeed in getting there we only have an hour. At ten o'clock the night-watch trumpet sounds and those who are out return to bed. What a blameless, hardworking nation we are. In bed by ten, faithful husbands and faithful wives. It is no city for lovers, for those out late on the street are viewed with suspicion. — Deborah Moggach

N. Martinez: Wildfires. That' why it smells so smoky. We had a dry winter, so the brush is like kindling
Eve: Are they different from regular fires?
N. Martinez: They're more unpredictable. They leap from one object to another, so it's hard to guess at their path or limit their destruction. Outside the city, they can roll over the landscape like a wave and hit you before you know it.
Eve: How do you stop them?
N. Martinez: You can't. Once they start, they choose their own path. All you can do is try to contain them until they burn themselves out. They're beautiful to watch, but they can be dangerous. — Michele Jaffe

Themselves on the building's famous balcony. Millions more will watch the ceremony and celebrations on live television
crowded around screens in their homes, at street parties in towns and villages and at major landmarks. Lawmakers are already lobbying London Mayor Boris Johnson to install a giant screen in the city's iconic Trafalgar Square. Britain's Foreign Office said royal officials had sent their regrets to Estibalis Chavez, — Anonymous

But tonight he remembered only the warm rooms and the faces of men and women bent over their bowls of steaming soup, and the children already asleep in their beds. He felt for them all a profound love, and he glowed. The moment of his loving was in the world of time merely sixty seconds ticked out by his watch, but in another dimension it was an arc of light encircling the city and leaving not one heart within it untouched by blessedness. Then the clocks began to strike, and the light of the ugly little man's moment of self-forgetfulness was drawn back again into the deep warmth within him. And he understood nothing of what had happened to him, only that now, for a little while, for a few moments or a few days, he would be happy and feel safe. — Elizabeth Goudge

I watch the white stars darken;
the day comes and the
white stars dim
and lessen
and the lights fade in the city. — H.D.

For me, it feels like driving from truth into a lie, from adulthood to childhoold. I watch the land of pavement and glass and metal turn into an empty field. The snow is falling softly now, and I can faintly see the city's skyline up ahead, the buildings just a shade darker than the clouds. — Veronica Roth

I work so much, I miss the sun shine away. I sleep so little, Watch the stars fade into day. — Tegan Quin

Balanced atop the highest spire of the Salt Lake Temple, gleaming in the Utah sun, a statue of the angel Moroni stands watch over downtown Salt Lake City with his golden trumpet raised. This massive granite edifice is the spiritual and temporal nexus of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), which presents itself as the world's only true religion. Temple Square is to Mormons what the Vatican is to Catholics, or the Kaaba in Mecca is to Muslims. At last count there were more than eleven million Saints the world over, and Mormonism is the fastest-growing faith in the Western Hemisphere. At present in the United States there are more Mormons than Presbyterians or Episcopalians. On the planet as a whole, there are now more Mormons than Jews. Mormonism is considered in some sober academic circles to be well on its way to becoming a major world religion
the first such faith to emerge since Islam. — Jon Krakauer

the United Republic of Nations. Founded by Avatar Aang over seventy years earlier, the city served as a beacon of hope. It was a place where benders and non-benders could live together in peace. People with the ability to control one of the four elements were known as benders, and those without this ability were non-benders. Avatar Aang was no longer alive, but a giant statue of him kept watch over the city from a small — Erica David

When 'Sex and the City' aired its first season, people didn't know about HBO as a place for original series. People weren't saying, 'Oh I've got to watch 'Sex and the City'!' They found it later. In some ways, it helped change what people thought of HBO. — Darren Star

I have a few friends that have inspired me since I was a young kid. When I watch old films or modern movies - particularly 'Gladiator,' 'New Jack City' and 'The Skin I Live In' - I'll also get ideas. — Theophilus London

In a supersonic jet, you'll land before you take off. Your watch - if it's working right - will go back. (It'll stop if it's not). You've made a journey forwards and backwards at the same time. The trip will make you younger. — Zdenek Mahler

little sun little moon little dog
and a little to eat and a little to love
and a little to live for

in a little room
filled with little
mice
who gnaw and dance and run while I sleep
waiting for a little death
in the middle of a little morning

in a little city
in a little state
my little mother dead
my little father dead
in a little cemetery somewhere.

I have only
a little time
to tell you this:

watch out for
little death when he comes running

but like all the billions of little deaths
it will finally mean nothing and everything:

all your little tears burning like the dove,
wasted. — Charles Bukowski

There is nothing left to watch but fire and the night: circle within circle, light within light. Messages arrive in the net where discrete pulses cross. Parametal engines of joy and disaster give them wave and motion. We interpret and defeat their terms by terminus. The night? What of it. It is filled with bestial watchmen, trammeling the extremities and the interstices of the timeless city, portents fallen,
constellated deities plummeting in ash and smoke, roaming the apocryphal cities, the cities of speculation and reconstituted disorder, of insemination and incipience, swept round with the dark. — Samuel R. Delany

But William felt in his bones that you couldn't run a city on the basis of what the Watch liked. The Watch would probably like it if everyone spent their time indoors, with their hands on the table where people could see them. — Terry Pratchett

Dina, I'm bored," Caldenia announced.
Too bad. I guaranteed her safety, not entertainment. "What about your game?"
Her Grace gave me a shrug. "I've beaten it five times on the Deity setting. I've reduced Paris to ashes because Napoleon annoyed me. I've eradicated Gandhi. I've crushed George Washington. Empress Wu had potential, so I eliminated her before we even cleared Bronze Age. The Egyptians are my pawns. I dominate the planet. Oddly, I find myself mildly fascinated by Genghis Khan. A shrewd and savage warrior, possessing a certain magnetism. I left him with a single city, and I periodically make ridiculous demands that I know he can't meet so I can watch him squirm. — Ilona Andrews

When a man rides a long time through wild regions he feels the desire for a city. Finally he comes to Isidora, a city where the buildings have spiral staircases encrusted with spiral seashells, where perfect telescopes and violins are made, where the foreigner hesitating between two women always encounters a third, where cockfights degenerate into bloody brawls among the bettors. He was thinking of all these things when he desired a city. Isidora, therefore, is the city of his dreams: with one difference. The dreamed-of city contained him as a young man; he arrives at Isidora in his old age. In the square there is the wall where the old men sit and watch the young go by; he is seated in a row with them. Desires are already memories. — Italo Calvino

Liverpool is a massive club in reputation, but as soon as I came here, it felt like Atletico to me. It is a working city, an honest city. The people work all week, and on Saturday they want to go to Anfield and watch the best team in the world. — Fernando Torres

He was a priest now, pagan, half-naked in the night, performing obscure rites of interment. Or he was the lead player in his own novel, or in one of those new arcade games William loved, compelled to repeat some totemic motion until he got it right. Only once did he feel, as he had on New Year's Eve, that someone was standing among the trees, watching. Well, let him watch, damn it. Something was being enacted here, as if it had been this deeper mission calling Mercer home all along. And now that he'd completed it, maybe he would be allowed to advance through to the next level, to a world where no one got shot. — Garth Risk Hallberg

While I was writing the book, I went to see Louise Brooks's most famous film, Pandora's Box, at the Tivoli in Kansas City, and it was a lovely experience. You can watch old silent films on DVD or even on YouTube, but it was a different feeling watching her up on the big screen, seeing the film the way people saw it all those years ago. — Laura Moriarty

To sit on the front steps - whether it's a veranda in a small town or a concrete stoop in a big city - and to talk to our neighborhoods is infinitely more important than to huddle on the living-room lounger and watch a make-believe world in not-quite living color. — Harvey Milk