Cultural Hubs Quotes

I go to Paris, I go to London, I go to Rome, and I always say, 'There's no place like New York. It's the most exciting city in the world now. That's the way it is. That's it.'

In my world there would be as many public libraries as there are Starbucks.

These people, as far as I can see, do not congregate in the notorious centers of the movement, like the North Beach in San Francisco or Greenwich Village, or Venice, California.

Accessible local libraries are vital to communities and to children.

East Side, West Side, all around the town

Places like the National Theatre or Sheffield, these great engines of theatre, make us cutting edge because they can be experimental. They can do plays that nobody else can afford to do in ways nobody else can afford to do.

The United States is a world unto itself. We have mountains, we have deserts, we have a river that equals the Yangtze River, that equals the Nile. We have the greatest cities in the world - among the greatest cities in the world.

We must go to such towns as Bristol, York, and Norwich.

Universities are the cathedrals of the modern age. They shouldn't have to justify their existence by utilitarian criteria.

Cities have always been the fireplaces of civilization, whence light and heat radiated out into the dark.

Libraries are the pride of the city.

If you're big in Montreal, you're big in Quebec. If you're big in Toronto, you're big in Canada. But if you're big in New York, you're big in the rest of the world.

Our creative communities in Nashville, in L.A. and New York, and in Austin, those are communities you want to see stay viable.

Libraries are not just for reading in, but for sociable thinking, exploring, exchanging ideas and falling in love. They were never silent. Technology will not change that, for even in the starchiest heyday of Victorian self-improvement, libraries were intended to be meeting places of the mind, recreational as well as educational.

Fads get hot in California. A good idea can come from Des Moines, but it's not going to be anything there. Then it'll hit Venice Beach or Westwood and go all around the country, back to Des Moines.

Libraries are what is best about us as a society: open, exciting, rich, informative, free, inclusive, engaging.

America's cultural table is set by the people living in the three bubbles - New York Washington D.C. and Hollywood.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

All of my contemporaries in L.A. are all graduates of either Yale, Julliard, Trinity. The best of the bunch come from that.

Independent record stores are like a casino where you put down your money and you always win. How amazing to discover gems you didn't know about, to meet someone more passionate than you are, and to feel at home in a place you may never have been to before. I'm convinced they will never lose their place - Long may they rule.

What I'm nostalgic for is the idea of an edge in New York. There used to be these fringes of the city where civilization sort of ended, and therefore young people could live cheaply, or open nightclubs or art galleries, or even squat. That fringe moved out to New Jersey and Brooklyn. The whole idea of the metropolis is the centralization of like-minded souls, and when the central real estate becomes too expensive, the dreamers, the young poets, and the artists will go elsewhere.

Even though L.A. can be kind of tacky, when a city's big draws are The Roxy and the Viper Room, you know its pretty amazing.

The point of cities is multiplicity of choice.

I hope it's always going to be a mix between theatre, film and radio. I've been very lucky living in London that you can do all that - in New York and L.A., there's more of a structure for film in L.A. and theatre in New York. In London, our industry is smaller, but it produces brilliant work all in one place.

If most American cities are about the consumption of culture, Los Angeles and New York are about the production of culture - not only national culture but global culture.