Quotenik
categorized under:

city living

“The photographs . . . were harvested on one trip round London. The things they show have very little to do with Design, apart from achieving its object. They show what weather, wit, accident, lack of judgment, bad taste, bad spelling, necessity, and good loud repetition can do to put a sort of music into the streets where we walk.”

more info

source: “Street Level” (1961)

category: , , ,

medium: Essay

“I couldn’t be happier than I am in this apartment, with the sounds from Sixth Avenue constantly surprising me, never once repeating themselves.”

more info

source: “Searching for Silence,” by Alex Ross, The New Yorker, October 4, 2010, 52–61.

category: , , , , ,

medium: magazine profile

notes: from an interview with the filmmaker Elliot Caplan

“You have to take care of yourself, son. Don’t let this Harlem git you. I’m in New York, but New York ain’t in me, understand what I mean? Don’t git corrupted.”

more info

source: Invisible Man (New York: Vintage International, 1995), second edition, 255.

buy on Amazon
view on Google Books

category: , , ,

medium: fiction

“I think elm-birth is the prettiest fairy tale in the city’s wonderbook, for the big trees are delivered at night, when earth hangs down away from the light and fowls are stirring on their roosts. In all the long swing of time there has never been a fortnight such as this—these midnights when late strolling citizens come suddenly on a giant elm, arriving furtively in the marketplace and sliding into position for early risers to discover on their way to work.”

more info

source: “Education,” in One Man’s Meat (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1944), 57.

buy on Amazon
view on Google Books

category: , , , , , , ,

medium: essay

notes: White wrote this essay in March 1939.

“…in New York at the end of the day I play ostrich. I take a glass of beer or wine or a pill and go to sleep to have energy for the next day.”

more info

source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin (Vol 7, 1966–1974) (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), p53.

buy on Amazon

category: , , , , , ,

medium: diary

notes: from a winter 1967–1968 entry in Nin's diary

Quality Quote Collecting