Urban Anxiety Quotes

When I lived in Delhi, it was burdened with so many futures - fast roads, malls, flyovers - that one felt almost obliged to be hopeful. Now that hope has diminished, you can feel the city going into a frenzy to reinvent itself. I miss living there.

New York grabbed me too hard, as did adulthood.

New York can be a tad stressful.

The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extra human architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish.

In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.

Living in a city is stressful absent terrorism.

I have bizarre anxiety about being in a city - I have no idea who I am or where I am.

When I first arrived (in New York), it seemed to me the most terrifying city in the world... all those big buildings. I remember walking on Broadway, looking up at this huge, mountainous place-and being so lonely. But things started to clear up when I met a few people on the street whom I'd met before-all of a sudden there got to be a certain familiarity about the place, and the terror kind of evaporated. There was a lot of playing going on, and the New Yorkers, of course, were a completely different crowd from what I'd known.

I would never be able to spend all my life in a busy city like Mumbai.

Think of the country mouse and of the town mouse, and of the alarm and trepidation of the town mouse.

My preferred environment is by the sea or somewhere rural. I don't want to be in a city, I don't want to visit New York and I don't want to go shopping.

L.A. kind of scares me.

I don't wanna be a Londoner! Growing up, that was hell - being one of them kids who wears Air Force 1s and that. It made me feel sick.

With 'Greenberg,' I wanted to make a movie about Los Angeles... my great love for it and also the way that I felt not at home and alienated there.

I'm affected by my environment. Los Angeles makes me defensive and wary.

I'm still terrified of flying. I really have to get drunk to fly. I've found that I've developed fears I never had before... fears of heights, claustrophobia... only in cities, though, never in the country.

I would never be able to live in a huge city. I'd feel like one of 100,000 people doing the same thing.

When I go to Beirut, I don't drive. It's traumatizing to drive there.

If I had moved to Tokyo, I might even have become a completely different person... although, ever since the start, I've never wanted to move to Tokyo. I just can't handle there being so many people.

It's probably similar to being in New York City and having a cab driver behind you and you're driving too slow. It's not the most pleasant thing.

I lived for 10 years in Los Angeles, and the one element that surpasses everything else - that you are very conscious of - is fear. You can smell it.

New York seems very very foreign to me, like more foreign than almost anywhere in America, and almost anywhere in the world, I find it like one of the most overwhelming places.

When I was a kid, my mom used to run the vacuum cleaner, and the noise would bother me so much that I would run into the woods to calm down. I feel like that vacuum cleaner has been on since I moved to New York City.

Could anything be more indicative of a slight but general insanity than the aspect of the crowd on the streets of Chicago?