Jemaine Clement Quotes

In New York City, a lot of people think "the great outdoors" is the area between your front door and a taxi cab.

To live in a city is to be forever flinching.

Cities degrade us by magnifying trifles.

the simplicity & quiet ease of village life, is all humbug. The city is the only place to gain a knowledge of the world.

I've enjoyed living in New York for the last 10 years, where there's a real film culture, with the Film Forum and Lincoln Center.

This is the city, and I am one of the citizens/Whatever interests the rest interests me

I always think that in a big city, anything is possible, including reinventing yourself.

New York City is a place where you can lock yourself up in your little studio apartment, and not go outside at all, and not feel in the slightest guilty about it.

[On living in New York City:] I'm oblivious to everything. I just don't notice anything. I sat in a coffee shop, drank half a cup of coffee before I noticed there was lipstick on the cup. There was wadded-up gum and lipstick on the napkin. I must have been sitting on that woman's lap for an hour.

However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No. One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass. Do they know what they’re missing? Uh huh.

I stayed in L.A. long enough to get on my feet, and then I moved back to New York. The reason I moved here was that I don't feel warm outside of a city; it's too barren in the suburbs, and L.A. is a suburb. Here, it felt active.

Rural America's not coming back. That idea was lost with the Industrial Revolution. And yet with more than 80 percent of Americans living in metropolitan areas, there are still demagogues who want to run down the idea of multiculturalism, of urbanity, being the only future we have. We either live or die based on how we live in cities, and our society is either going to be great or not based on how we perform as creatures of the city.

Harmony with nature will bring you a happiness known to few city dwellers. In the company of other truth seekers it will be easier for you to meditate and think of God.

I love New York City. I love that I get to live there and I love everything about it.

If man can live in Manhattan, he can live anywhere.

The city mouse lives in a house, The garden mouse lives in a bower

The city reveals the moral ends of being, and sets the awful problem of life. The country soothes us, refreshes us, lifts us up with religious suggestion.

Work. Home. The pub. Meeting girls. Living in the city. Life. Is that all there is?

New York City is my playground.

I live in New York City. I could never live anywhere else. The events of September 11 forced me to confront the fact that no matter what, I live here and always will. One of my favorite things about New York is that you can pick up the phone and order anything and someone will deliver it to you. Once I lived for a year in another city, and almost every waking hour of my life was spent going to stores, buying things, loading them into the car, bringing them home, unloading them, and carrying them into the house. How anyone gets anything done in these places is a mystery to me.

We either live or die based on how we live in cities, and our society is either going to be great or not based on how we perform as creatures of the city.

I'd left Hawaii twice in my life, so I'd been on an island my whole life. I had no clue. I didn't know how to live in a city.

Cities give us collision. 'Tis said, London and New York take the nonsense out of a man.