Community Hubs Quotes

Public libraries are the last vestige of public free space.

I have a passion for libraries. They are potentially real community centers.

I have always tried to create bridges that are more than a connecting structure - places in their own right.

Bars are meeting places and places to unwind. But at some point, what is culture unwinding from, and why can't they meet anywhere else?

The function of arts centers goes far beyond being places for performance. They might not be explicitly religious, but they are civic and social spaces.

Cities have always been the fireplaces of civilization, whence light and heat radiated out into the dark.

Libraries are our friends.

Libraries are not just for reading in, but for sociable thinking, exploring, exchanging ideas and falling in love. They were never silent. Technology will not change that, for even in the starchiest heyday of Victorian self-improvement, libraries were intended to be meeting places of the mind, recreational as well as educational.

Libraries are what is best about us as a society: open, exciting, rich, informative, free, inclusive, engaging.

It's important to keep indie record stores alive because their unique environments introduce music lovers to things in a very personal way.

I always feel a certain sense of reverence in libraries, even small city ones that smell like homeless internet users.

It is important to have permanent safe spaces in Harlem.

Browsing for books with a mouse and screen is not nearly as joyful an act as wandering the stacks and getting lost in the labyrinthine corridors of knowledge. The best libraries are places of imagination, education and community. The best libraries have mystery to them.

Growing up, the news agents round my way in Kilburn all had 'Time Out' on their shopfronts. The logo is a London icon.

Independent record stores are like a casino where you put down your money and you always win. How amazing to discover gems you didn't know about, to meet someone more passionate than you are, and to feel at home in a place you may never have been to before. I'm convinced they will never lose their place - Long may they rule.

I moved to L.A. and really didn't dig living there until I found places like Koreatown and Little Tokyo. I really like hanging out in the grocery stores and restaurants.

Long before Starbucks popularized the phrase 'the third place' - somewhere to interact outside of work and home - it was neighborhood restaurants that helped to define places like Union Square.

There are people all over Australia who use their homes as hubs that they travel from, and they encourage their indigenous people to continue to stay there.

Bookstores are lonely forts, spilling light onto the sidewalk. They civilize their neighborhoods.

In the end, in England, when you want to find out how people are feeling, you always go to the pubs.

The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

They are universal places, like churches, hallowed meeting places of all mankind.

I'd much rather hang out in a cafe. That's where things are really happening.

Theatres, along with the likes of the Ulster Orchestra, for example, are the cultural heartbeats of our towns and cities, and without them, we are much poorer for it.

I'm really excited about public libraries that are redefining themselves as free learning centers.