Mike D Quotes

My belief, for what it is worth, is that city dwellers cannot understand the world. Insulated from reality by complex and expert systems of provision and police, baffled by fashion and spectacle, city dwellers can distinguish neither the sources of their existence nor the consequences.

People drive everywhere in L.A., so you get very little human interaction... but N.Y. and Chicago are like London... L.A. lacks the social interaction.

Chicago's one of the most segregated cities in America. Everybody lives in their own silos and vacuums.

If you haven't already noticed, all my books are about a lonely person looking for some way to connect with other people.In a way, that is the opposite of the American Dream: to get so rich you can rise above the rabble, all those people on the freeway or, worse, the bus.

The Great Gatsby Curve

Most Americans seem to be stuck in the economic strata to which they were born.

American poverty is darkened by lonliness: poverty in so many poor countries …. Is brightened only by community. Helping people gain other people to lean on—not just offering cheaper health care and food stamps, tax cuts and charter schools—seems essential to making the American dream work …

The distribution of wealth, therefore, depends on the laws and customs of society.

It is surprising how few references in our politics there are to the underclass as compared by the middle class.

Political power is now widely diffused; and whatever may be the evils of democracy, this good has come of it, that it has forced men to open their eyes to the misery of the masses, and to inquire more zealously as to the possibility of a better distribution of wealth.

As America has grown less economically equal, a citizen's ability to move upward has fallen behind that of citizens in other Western democracies. We are no longer the country where anyone can become anything.

We are a segmented society, living in our individual bubbles.

Sometimes I think that the public's lack of criticism of the rich - and how they seek their pleasure - might derive from the fact that Americans still believe they will one day be joining their number.

Suburbia, to me, was the most fantastical, unusual place. I thought it was Disneyland.

One of the most interesting social trends of the past 20 years is the rise of residential segregation. So rich are living with rich and poor are living with poor.

The social and physical construction of suburban America really was quite complex. It was a very elaborate system, and clearly a massive social engineering project that has changed U.S. society enormously.

To me, Los Angeles was the invention of the suburb. They figured it out and perfected it and created a city that was dependent on the automobile.

When I ascended from the depths of the working class to the middle class, the higher I got, the more dishonesty I found.

Upward mobility across classes peaked in the U.S. in the late 19th century. Most of the gains of the 20th century were achieved en masse; it wasn't so much a phenomenon of great numbers of people rising from one class to the next as it was standards of living rising sharply for all classes. You didn't have to be exceptional to rise.

In L.A., it's the sort of city where you have to have a car to get around.

New York City has an integration problem.

Success breeds inequality, and you don't want to choke off success.

I hated L.A. when I first got here. Hated it.

I'm not the first person to talk about this, but L.A. is just sort of a weird city because it's just a bunch of little towns put together under the umbrella of L.A. So people feel disconnected from each other and far apart, and in a relationship, that can also be a thing.

Los Angeles feels empty and overrated. I struggle with it as a holiday destination. It's the sort of place where you need to know some locals, otherwise it just feels so empty.