Local Character Quotes

I think you need to, as an architect, understand the essence of a place and create a building that feels like it resonates with the culture of a place. So my buildings in India or in Kansas City or in Arkansas or in Singapore, they come out different because the places are so different.

The Devonian and Cornishman will be found by the visitor to be courteous and hospitable. There is no roughness of manner where unspoiled by periodic influx of strangers; he is kindly, tender-hearted, and somewhat suspicious.

No matter what you say about the town, and anything you say probably is true, there's never been another like it.

Norfolk would not be Norfolk without a church tower on the horizon or round a corner up a lane. We cannot spare a single Norfolk church. When a church has been pulled down the country seems empty or is like a necklace with a jewel missing.

I think, strangely, a strip club can tell you a lot about the city you're in. If you call a strip club "Tuna's," I've gotta go in there. Usually you're not seeing the top talent around, but it's not about that. It's about the experience.

There is something about Midwest in general, that has kind of an underdog quality.

Shetland is the most remote place in the U.K. It's a part our country, but completely unique. It might be British, but it's closer to Norway than to Edinburgh, and it feels very different from the mainland.

I don't want to compare my city to Zurich; thank God we're not that boring. Rio is advancing fast, but we're at a different phase in our civilization.

Country has become too homogenized and too commercial. It has lost what makes it special. It's great that it's popular, but then it starts to become watered down.

The South is the last place with a sense of place.

You want each city to be different, not just see the same shopping malls and stores wherever you go. That's not healthy.

We have good, neighborly people in Gary.

Basically, I have found that people who have tried to start communities out of good feelings or hippie-dippie abstract concepts of love - it doesn't work. But if you just concentrate on what is the identity of your town - its waterfalls, its battles, its notable mill strike or those things - you dig into what your town is from its rock formations to its history to its food. Then this thing called community happens all the time.

I don't like the idea that one hotel could be better than another. In any city, I try to find a hotel that has the identity of that place - Claridge's in London, the Danieli or Cipriani in Venice. In New York, I stay at the Mercer Hotel; it is so much in the character of SoHo.

I think I was technically uncredited as Local #1, because there were three of us. But I had the most lines [in My Sweet Charlie].

The true test is, whether the object be of a local character, and local use; or, whether it be of general benefit to the states. If it be purely local, congress cannot constitutionally appropriate money for the object. But, if the benefit be general, it matters not, whether in point of locality it be in one state, or several; whether it be of large, or of small extent.

I'm always very cautious, because I don't want St. Lucia to turn out like everything else. I want to have a personality and be unique in some way that maybe limits our appeal to everyone in the world but makes us more special in some way.

If you're looking for can-do, earthy-crunchy attitude then you've got to go to Wisconsin.

Auburn is a very small, quiet college town, a different kind of place geographically and culturally.

I love Notting Hill and Westbourne Grove - there is so much life and vitality around Portobello and Ladbroke Grove. It has come up a lot since I started Virgin more than 40 years ago, but there is so much character.

Key West, unfortunately, is becoming rather literary and artistic.

That's part of the character of Shanghainese people. They're good negotiators, they're very persistent, and you grow up in an atmosphere like that - very competitive. That becomes part of your personality: Shanghai personality becomes part of yours. Just like New Yorkers - they're often like that.

To me, what defines a New Yorker is the edge that one develops from having actually lived here. Once you have it, it doesn't go away, and everywhere else in the world feels like it is in slow motion.

Every place you go to, they have their own little flair.

Bookstores are lonely forts, spilling light onto the sidewalk. They civilize their neighborhoods.