
“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.”
Robert Brownjohn
more info“I couldn’t be happier than I am in this apartment, with the sounds from Sixth Avenue constantly surprising me, never once repeating themselves.”
John Cage
more infosource: “Searching for Silence,” by Alex Ross, The New Yorker, October 4, 2010, 52–61.
category: apartment, city living, happiness, New York City, sound, traffic
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.”
Ralph Ellison
more infosource: Invisible Man (New York: Vintage International, 1995), second edition, 255.
buy on Amazon
view on Google Books
category: city living, corruption, Harlem, New York City
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.”
E. B. White
more infosource: “Education,” in One Man’s Meat (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1944), 57.
buy on Amazon
view on Google Books
category: city living, earth, elm, magic, New York City, transplant, tree, wonder
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.”
Anaïs Nin
more infosource: The Diary of Anaïs Nin (Vol 7, 1966–1974) (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), p53.
buy on Amazon
category: alcohol, city living, coping mechanism, drug, escape, New York City, ostrich
medium: diary
notes: from a winter 1967–1968 entry in Nin's diary


city living