Urban Experience Quotes

I grew up in a small Southern town, and there were white people and black people. Coming to New York to go to Columbia, every time I went into the subway I was absolutely astounded because you see people from all over the world who actually live here - who aren't just here as tourists.

After spending eight years in Manchester, I received a very warm welcome to Turin. The people are very easy-going, in contrast to other parts of Italy such as Rome or Naples, where passions run much higher.

Everything all the time in a city is extraordinary!

Few people have written significant books about San Francisco. Robert Duncan was, in my opinion, often in the clouds. If he walked the streets a lot he didn't write about as such.

I have to listen to New York; I live there. I wasn't born there, but I've been living there all my life.

New York has been the subject of thousands of books. Every immigrant group has had its saga as has every epoch and social class.

There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something.

You live in the city and all the time there are signs telling you what to do and billboards trying to sell you something.

Every ghetto kid that walks the earth can see something in KRS-One that reminds him of himself.

I remember returning to Bangalore after a few months of travel and seeing it as a first-world city, like New York or San Francisco. This may be obvious to some people, but I grew up in Delhi, and I had no experience of how someone from a 'Tier 2' city may view a 'Tier 1' city. You really do emigrate between worlds when you come from those towns.

The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extra human architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish.

I grew up in a city, an Italian, knowing what the Mafia was.

Cities can be paradoxical places. In the mornings they buzz with commuters, in the evenings they come alive with diners and partygoers, at weekends the streets fill with shoppers and market traders. But amidst the hustle and bustle, even the greatest city can be a lonely place.

I've already done things I never believed I would. Even stepping out of Northampton and being in London - London always seemed like the big city I might go to for Carnival, go for a party and a chill and then head home.

New York is the last true city.

I moved to New York City in '92 and had no money. I had a lot of free time, as actors do. I would go to the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center.

I loved New York in the '50s.

Paris ain't much of a town.

I'm a creature of the New York City streets.

There are two things in New York, euphoria and disaster.

After that, I started going downtown and doing a lot of theater shows in Chicago. When you go downtown there, it's like you're in New York, it's like going to Broadway.

I usually get so warned when I go to Detroit, like, 'Oh my God, don't go to this section, don't go to that section.' I've never had any issues in Detroit. I love that there's enough of a racial mix of people to make fun of. I've always had a good time there.

I'm from the burbs. I've been in the hood, but I don't live there. I have lived in the hood, but I don't live there anymore. I lived in Harlem, and that was crazy, even though Harlem is a lot nicer than it used to be.

If you go into an underground train in London - probably anywhere, but chiefly in London - there's that sense of almost entering a ghostly dimension. People are very still and quiet; they don't exchange many pleasantries.

New York will make you feel small. I think that's good. At least, it's good for me.