Colson Whitehead Quotes

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.

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

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.

I found that through my life, living in the city of Toronto, I look above the Pizza Pizza sign, and I look above the other signs and window dressing, and I see evidence of a city that no longer exists in the keystones and the decorations that line the tops of buildings. That presence of the old city has always moved me.

You cannot separate the buildings out from the infrastructure of cites and the mobility of transit.

The design of a city is like a strange archeology.

In 1964, when we first arrived in New York City, I remember vividly seeing the skyline of Manhattan, and our first proposal of 1964 was to wrap two lower Manhattan buildings. We never got permission.

When they show the destruction of society on color TV, I want to be able to look out over Los Angeles and make sure they get it right.

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

When you look at a city, it's like reading the hopes, aspirations and pride of everyone who built it.

Old San Francisco - the one so many nostalgics yearn for - had buildings that related well to each other.

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.

We then journeyed on to London Street, down which the tidal ditch continues its course.

Good and bad make up a city.

Cities are immortal.

The city of magnificent intentions.

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.

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.

Most cities are eclectic. There's a bit of medieval, Georgian, some Victorian and some 20th century. That's fine. Bath is different because it was built within 100 years or less. It has a homogeneity.

London is a vast, complex city designed by the same guy who created the Habitrail.

That's the beauty of Mumbai. While some parts have grown rapidly, there are places like Churchgate that have retained their character.

I'm not one of these people who thinks everything in the past is great and everything modern is terrible. But I do think cities should be a mix of old things and new things.

Tower'd cities please us then, And the busy hum of men.

I really like Pietermaritzburg: it is really a course for me - really technical.

I actually grew up in the City of Pasadena.