Doris Lessing Quotes

All that a city will ever allow you is an angle on it, an oblique, indirect sample of what it contains, or what passes through it; a point of view.

I'm very obsessed with the energy of New York and the idea of the way people behave in the city versus the way they behave in a natural environment.

I love New York City because there's something to do 24/7, something that will make you see things in a whole different light. Like they say, it's the city that never sleeps.

There are many sides of the urban life that I dislike, but there are many sides I am deeply in love with and attached to.

I sit on the steps in the heat of the sun and listen as one by one these car alarms extinguish themselves until once more only the muted roar of the city is audible, and the city, bathed in sunlight, once again resumes dreaming its collective dream. Cars roll down the city's roads, plants grow from its soil, wealth is generated in its rooms, hope is created and lost and recreated in the minds and souls of its inhabitants, and the city continues its dream and searches for those ideas that will make it strong.

Give me such shows - give me the streets of Manhattan!

That's the great thing about New York, there's always something to do.

Living in New York City, you have to keep trying to do a lot of things.

I think that London is very much like that. I find there's humour in the air and people are interesting. And I think that it's a place which is constantly surprising. The worst thing about it? I think it can be smug and aggressive.

I just would like to spend more time in New York City.

My passion is New York and the vitality that makes it special.

The great thing about living in New York is the constant change of things. It inspires me to keep moving, push forward, question ideas.

Manhattan's always fascinating, too, just a big, stinky, smelly conglomeration of numbered avenues and streets, but it's just got a vibe that's hard to beat. I shouldn't like it, but I do. I can't put my finger on it.

New York is like a vacation - no beach required.

I'm a city boy. I grew up in a big city, in Birmingham, and I want to write about a city. It's much richer tapestry for me than green fields. Fields and wild life make me feel ill. I don't like - I don't want to write about that stuff.

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.

Every day is a different day in New York; there's always something new going on.

I think everyone should live in New York City if they ever get the chance at least once in their life. It's such a great place to live; there's a different energy about living in the city.

The best thing about being in New York is the people, and you get to walk everywhere.

I love New York; I love the city. It's impossible. It's a theme park of a city, isn't it.

But a city is more than a place in space, it is a drama in time.

There is something about New York City that in and of itself is so theatrical hat I use to think... I use to feel when I walked out of my apartment on the way to school or anywhere that I was walking out on stage.

Exciting cities stay exciting, and boring cities stay boring.

I'm in love with cities. I find them amazing, the quiet co-ordination of thousands of people, going about what we're trying to do, and that organism of the city nurturing human aspiration, and the actual city fabric itself being a special thing rather than just infrastructure.

Living in New York always felt to me like living in the middle of a carnival. It never stopped. There was something very exciting about it.