Norton Juster 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 love, love writing about Los Angeles. I love exploring every part of it. And I find, rather than a burden, it's actually one of the most enjoyable parts of the writing process for me. I love everything about L.A. Okay, not the traffic. But I love the way it looks. I love the geography. I love the diversity.

Life in cities is not a spring but a river, or rather, a water main. It progresses like a novel, artificially.

I wrote a book of essays about New York called 'The Colossus of New York,' but it's not about - you know, when I'm writing about rush hour or Central Park, it's not a black Central Park, it's just Central Park, and it's not a black rush hour, it's just rush hour.

When I thought about Detroit, I would think big city, very urban - not a lot of places to walk around, not a lot of parks. I sort of pictured Manhattan almost, where, besides Central Park, it's all city and big buildings. But now that I'm here, you see people pushing strollers, people hanging out in the park.

The city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo.

We say we want to create beauty, identity, quality, singularity. And yet, maybe in truth these cities that we have are desired. Maybe their very characterlessness provides the best context for living.

I had a major bug for cities and for paintings and literature and all the things I thought went on in cities.

Good and bad make up a city.

Until I was about 13, Manhattan had been a world seen from its edges.

I'm a big-city boy. What I like is big cities. It's not just what I like. It's what I write about.

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 love cities. New York, Montreal, London, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney, Melbourne, Toronto, L.A... but, I do choose to live in Vancouver. It's home.

Now I'm writing about contemporary Los Angeles from memory. My process was to hang out, observe, research what I was writing about, and almost immediately go back to my office and write those sections. So it was a very close transfer between observation and writing.

I do not go outdoors... As far as I'm concerned, the whole point of living in New York City is indoors. You want greenery? Order the spinach.

I will say that growing up as a kid in an urban environment and having lived in cities all my life, the one achievement that everyone can look forward to is getting the perfect parking spot.

An urban novelist never minds a little decay.

One of the things I love about 'Rubicon' is I really recognize the New York City that they're depicting in it, having lived here for 15 years.

You can get the true essence of New Yorkers by just hanging out in Central Park.

I wanted to experience New York, to look up and see buildings.

A culture, we all know, is made by its cities.

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.

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

Cities are obvious metaphors for life. We call roads 'arteries' and so forth.

I think the city is the strongest social memory organ of humanity.