#City

"When I did 'Sex and the City,' it was like, 'Let's do a comedy where the humor is not coming from innuendo but from the a truthful place. This is a show where we're going to be able to say and do what we want.'"

"I consider myself Istanbul's storyteller. My subject matter is my town. I consider it my job to explore the hidden patterns of my city's clandestine corners, its shady, mysterious places, the things I love."

"Like the United Nations, there is something inspirational about New York as a great melting pot of different cultures and traditions. And if this is the city that never sleeps, the United Nations works tirelessly, around the clock around the world."

"Do you want to achieve something or do you just want to make money?” asked a nearby man in a white shirt to another man in a striped shirt. I waited for the answer as I slowly walked past them. “Why is it an either or question?” the man in the striped shirt finally murmured philosophically under a sip of beer. They both stood there looking at each other in thought."

"Really, nobody was there?” I asked.“Well, nobody important,” he said, putting his glasses back on and blinking."

"If you want to know my story, you have to go back to the beginning. Not the beginning-beginning, but about nine months later. You see, I was born as a poor farm boy. Believe it or not, my parents were so poor that they didn’t even own a farm. Nope. Instead, they had to live in a small apartment in the city."

"I think Baltimore suffers from nostalgia and it keeps us from being honest in talking about what really happened here. A place doesn't have to be perfect to be beloved, and I love this city and I love it better for seeing its flaws."

"Venice is the perfect place for a phase of art to die. No other city on earth embraces entropy quite like this magical floating mall."

"When people endure a traumatic event, they are either defeated or made stronger. On Sept. 11, I told New Yorkers, 'I want you to emerge stronger from this.' My words were partially a hope and partially an observation that people in New York City handle big things better than little things. I could not be more proud of the way my city responded."

"I gradually became aware that my interiority was inseparable from my exteriority, that the geography of my city was the geography of my soul."

"Don’t you think most of those kids think too much about who got an A or a B when they were in law school and what that means to an inflated G.P.A. and not enough about the world?” asked Connor irrelevantly."

"I love Amsterdam. The city is vibrant and alive. It's fresh and so open. It's definitely one of my favorite places."

"Every city across the country that has successfully renewed and revitalized itself points to a robust education system as its fundamental key to success."

"when I become death. Death is the seed from which I grow."

"I think the art fair is very much a form of urbanism. I think something really happens to the cities when such a fair happens. The city becomes an exhibition; it's amazing."

"This was how it was with travel: one city gives you gifts, another robs you. One gives you the heart’s affections, the other destroys your soul. Cities and countries are as alive, as feeling, as fickle and uncertain as people. Their degrees of love and devotion are as varying as with any human relation. Just as one is good, another is bad."

"Should I have a doughnut or my disgusting cardboard?” asked Gwynn, as she drew up languidly before me at a study table in a bookstore on State Street, raising a puffed rice cake in the air. My eyes narrowed attentively at her face, but as I hesitated, she announced eagerly, “Disgusting cardboard it is!"

"One of the professors told me last week that he feels bad teaching with the way the economy is now. ‘What’s the point?’ he said. ‘Kids aren’t getting jobs.’ You never hear faculty talk that way. He did."

"In those early years in New York when I was a stranger in a big city, it was the companionship and later friendship which I was offered in the Linnean Society that was the most important thing in my life."

"[Poem: Slates of Grey]Sullen faces like slates of grey—What I’d seen on a walk today.Bodies rushing bodies boltingTime for life a disregarding.Money to make and to grow oldWhat about the hands to hold?Deadlines, projects, people to meetWhat about our own two feet.Sullen faces like slates of grey...What I’d see most anyday."