Colum McCann Quotes

New York is hard, cynical, ruthless, even beyond other cities. From their early repression its children emerge sophisticated, both stunted and overdeveloped, perverted, premature, forced by the artificiality of their environment.

Cities are the abyss of the human species.

Cities degrade us by magnifying trifles.

The modern city hardly knows a pure darkness or true silence anymore, nor does it know the effect of a single small light or that of a lonely distant shout.

Tower'd cities please us then, And the busy hum of men.

The modern city consists of...dark, narrow streets full of gasoline fumes, coal dust, and toxic gasses, torn by the noise.

The City is an addictive machine from which there is no escape

I am a New Yorker. I like New York. And I like cities. And it's not my desire to make New York more suburban. I would personally just like to vet each person.

Cities are magical things. You know the energy in them. You have to walk the streets in any borough here and you can see between what was in this city in the 1970's and where it is today and how much more energy there is and how much more just sheer.

The seeds of civilization are in every culture, but it is city life that brings them to fruition.

Whilst we want cities as the centres where the best things are found, cities degrade us by magnifying trifles.

I don't like landscapes. I like cities. Lots of cities. I like buildings. I like streets.

Every city is always changing, on its own trajectory.

Cities are not problems. They are solutions.

A culture, we all know, is made by its cities.

I live in L.A., I grew up here, it's not that crazy for me because it's L.A., you know?

Cities are immortal.

The United States was born in the country and has moved to the city.

People are the nature of the city, and you can feel it in the pavement.

A contrast between country and city, as fundamental ways of life, reaches back into classical times.

The City of New York is like an enormous citadel, a modern Carcassonne. Walking between the magnificent skyscrapers one feels the presence on the fringe of a howling, raging mob, a mob with empty bellies, a mob unshaven and in rags.

City's just a jungle; more games to play Trapped in the heart of it, tryin' to get away I was raised in the country, I been workin' in the town I been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down

In a few hours one could cover that incalculable distance; from the winter country and homely neighbours, to the city where the air trembled like a tuning-fork with unimaginable possibilities.

The sweetest souls, like the sweetest flowers, soon canker in cities, and no purity is rarer there than the purity of delight.

Walking through the city streets... Is it by mistake or design?