Urban Perception Quotes

Today I am so at home in Dublin, more than in any other city, that I feel it has always been familiar to me. But, as with Belfast it took me years to penetrate its outer ugliness and dourness, so with Dublin it took me years to see through its soft charm to its bitter prickly kernel - which I quite like too.

I think perhaps it is a generational thing. I talk to younger people and they say, Where is this melancholy city you talk about My Istanbul is a sunny place.

I mean, if Hardee's is urban, I'm not sure I want to see rural.

When I thought about Detroit, I would think big city, very urban - not a lot of places to walk around, not a lot of parks. I sort of pictured Manhattan almost, where, besides Central Park, it's all city and big buildings. But now that I'm here, you see people pushing strollers, people hanging out in the park.

I received a grant from The Ford Foundation to write a book for kids about urban perception, or how people experience cities, but I kept putting off writing it. Instead I started to write what became The Phantom Tollbooth.

I know that New York is big, there are huge buildings, but in fact, it's quite small and contained.

I think there's a stigma to some degree about the outer boroughs and Jersey, and whether their stories are worth telling.

I was a failure in Boston...because they thought I was too fashionable to be intelligent, and a failure in New York because they were afraid I was too intelligent to be fashionable.

The hardest thing about living in Canberra is that almost everyone who doesn't live here asks: 'Why on earth would you live in Canberra?' Loudly, and in a way they would never use to discuss anywhere else. And they never listen to the answer.

A lot of people get Chicago wrong. I've developed this protective feeling about how we're portrayed, and at the same time, I'm acutely aware of the issues we face and the root causes of these issues.