Studs Terkel Quotes

There are all these people here I don't know by sight or by name. And we pass alongside each other and don't have any connection. And they don't know me and I don't know them. And now I'm leaving town and there are all these people I will never know.

But a stranger in a strange land, he is no one. Men know him not, and to know not is to care not for.

Her face was a stranger’s face, which was as it should be. Love each other from the day we are born to the day we die, we are still strangers every minute, and nobody should forget that, even though we have to.

No one knows who I am and no-one cares. I could jump in front of a camera man and he'd just tell me to get out of the way.

You feel quite distant by playing at huge stadiums year after year, where you only can see a great darkness in front of you.

We could hang around for ten years and nobody would care enough to identify us. Therein lies the horror.

Even though I write about the human race, the further away from them, the better I feel. Two miles is great; two thousand miles is beautiful.

Nobody knows me.

When you are an outsider, no one is ready to meet you or listen to you. People have even said that there are thousands of Sonu Soods out there, and they don't have time to cater to each one of them.

My face, my self, what would they mean to anybody? Just another stiff. So this self of mine passes some other's self on the street - what do we have to say to each other? Hey there! Hi ya!That's about it. Nobody raises a hand. No one turns around to take another look.

Welcome to New York, where everybody's a stranger, and nobody is.

New York was a new and strange world. Vast, impersonal, merciless.... Always before I had felt like a person, an individual, hopeful that I could mold my life according to some desire of my own. But here in New York I was ignorant, insignificant, unimportant--one in millions whose destiny concerned no one. New York did not even know of my existence. Nor did it care.

I do desire we may be better strangers.

At night we are all strangers, even to ourselves.

New York was a city where you could be frozen to death in the midst of a busy street and nobody would notice.

Strangers are an endangered species.

There are too many of us, he thought. There are billions of us and that's too many. Nobody knows anyone. Strangers come and violate you. Strangers come and cut your heart out. Strangers come and take your blood. Good God, who were those men? I never saw them before in my life!

There are so many people in the world, and I want to know them all but I don’t even know my next-door neighbor’s name.

We can't all be friends and relatives as the world is; most of us have to be strangers.

Our friends - how distant, how mute, how seldom visited and little known. And I, too, am dim to my friends and unknown; a phantom, sometimes seen, often not. Life is a dream surely.

Everyone is from Russia. Sometimes I think I'm from Russia, too. All these new Ovas. I don't know anyone. I don't really recognise anyone. That's just how it is. I think my name must be Williamsova.

You can sit up here, feeling above it all while knowing you’re not, coming to the lonely conclusion that the only thing you can ever really know about anyone is that you don’t know anything about them at all.

Then everyone leaves, and you are left, each night, to your own devices with a crowd of interesting people - most of whom you don't know - sitting in the dark.

The city had defeated her, just like they said it would. Like some overcrowded party, no one had noticed her arrival, and would notice if she left.

It is a lonely feeling when someone you care about becomes a stranger.