The city of San Francisco engulfed their view through the front windshield. The dazzling light of the late morning sun transformed every glass and metal surface into a silvery mirage.
The images I had were of people being driven mad by living in the city. Images of parents who were so hungry and unfulfilled that they ate their own children.
The bright side of the planet moves toward darkness And the cities are falling asleep, each in its hour, And for me, now as then, it is too much. There is too much world.
Cities have the capability to at any moment shift out of the familiar, even if you've lived in one all your life.
A great gift would be a map full of evacuation routes for the city, subtly telling the recipient to get the hell out of town.
Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.
the lesser grindstone stood alone there in the calm morning air, with a red upon it that the sun had never given, and would never take away.
I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul.
A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it.
In the moonlight which is always sad, as the light of the sun itself is--as the light called human life is--at its coming and its going.
That glorious vision of doing good is so often the sanguine mirage of so many good minds.
Not knowing how he lost himself, or how he recovered himself, he may never feel certain of not losing himself again.
Have I missed a national holiday? There must be celebrations in the streets for you to be home at this hour of the day." "I'm calling it Summerset Goes Mute Day. The city's gone mad with joy.
It was as if some great ocean of destruction had rolled its unyielding tide through the city and then, upon its terrible recession, left behind only a shoreline of concrete sand and crushed humanity.
We stood side by side, and for that minute, in the stillness of that room, he was not the King. I was not not the Princess, taken against her will to the City. We were two people trying to forget.
And that’s the best we can hope for from art, you know? That it changes you for the better. That it lights up the world a little bit.
I belong here, I tell Toy. I'm hungry for every city block. Every brick building. Every crowded intersection. Electric. I feel brand new.
The Rusty Ruins were the remains of an old city, a hulking reminder of back when there'd been way too many people, and everyone was incredibly stupid. And ugly.
There were thousands of households throughout that city and there was something happening in all of them. There was some kind of story in each, but self-contained. No one else knew. No one else cared.
At least until there are new lakes in the clouds that open upon living cities as yet unknown, and perhaps forever, that is a question which you must answer within your own heart.
Italian cities have long been held up as ideals, not least by New Yorkers and Londoners enthralled by the ways their architecture gives beauty and meaning to everyday acts.
