Francesca Lia Block Quotes

It is not the walls that make the city, but the people who live within them.

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

I cannot go to the houses of my nearest relatives, because I do not wish to be alone. Society exists by chemical affinity, and not otherwise.

I love being in cities with lots of other people, because I'm reminded that there are billions of people like me, and we are each stuck inside of our minds, feverishly trying to crawl out to make connections with other people.

I'm an irredeemable urbanite. I can't imagine living more than a five-minute walk from my fellow human beings. Other people are vital to my peace of mind.

I love cities.

L.A. is great, but it's a completely different beast. I go back to Minnesota, and I borrow a bike from my neighbor and go around Lake Harriet saying 'Hi' to people. Some of that is missing in L.A.

I've been in Los Angeles for a while, and the kind of psychological connection that one makes to people, it just doesn't happen out here.

It is quite hard to relax in London. I always say I'd move somewhere quieter, but I am a bit of a confirmed urbanite now - it crept up on me without me noticing. I always think that I function quite well on my own, unusually so, but then I'm reminded how important people are to me.

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

Having to wake up at seven and go take the subway every morning, having to get over there with all these commuters and see every possible face of humanity and realizing that you're just the same as these other people is actually an amazingly positive thing.

I love London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Paris - there are a million places I could imagine I like, but N.Y. is home.

If you live in a big city, and you're surrounded by people, you're way more in touch with humanity than you would be if you lived in a very remote area and just spent all day long on the computer.

People are the nature of the city, and you can feel it in the pavement.

My first decade of living in a metropolis was like, I was a people watcher. It meant the world to me to talk to strangers. I got excited about the fifth time I'd see the same person in the same bodega. I loved getting to know a certain clerk or barista. It took on a whole big meaning for me because of that atomization that suburban people do start to feel.

Where should the scholar live? In solitude, or in society? in the green stillness of the country, where he can hear the heart of Nature beat, or in the dark, gray town where he can hear and feel the throbbing heart of man?

Cities - I'm attracted to them, and I have a special attachment to New York...it's my place.

I had a good friend in New York City.

To live in a city is to be forever flinching.

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.

I used to feel so alone in the city. All those gazillions of people and then me, on the outside. Because how do you meet a new person? I was very stunned by this for many years. And then I realized, you just say, "Hi." They may ignore you. Or you may marry them. And that possibility is worth that one word.

My first year in L.A. I felt lost in that big city. It's easy to be tumbled around and not figure out where you fit in even when you find your little niche.

People nowadays like to be together not in the old-fashioned way of, say, mingling on the piazza of an Italian Renaissance city, but, instead, huddled together in traffic jams, bus queues, on escalators and so on. It's a new kind of togetherness which may seem totally alien, but it's the togetherness of modern technology.