QUOTES

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Silence? What can New York-noisy, roaring, rumbling, tumbling, bustling, story, turbulent New York-have to do with silence? Amid the universal clatter, the incessant din of business, the all swallowing vortex of the great money whirlpool-who has any, even distant, idea of the profound repose……of silence?
- Walt Whitman

City of the world!
(for all races are here;
All the lands of the earth make contributions here;)
City of the sea! city of hurried and glittering tides!
City whose gleeful tides continually rush or recede, whirling in and out, with eddies and foam!
City of wharves and stores! city of tall façades of marble and iron!
Proud and passionate city! Mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!
- Walt Whitman

One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store, or some other sign that people do not totally regret life.
- Frank O’Hara

Odyssey on odyssey and land over land,
Creeping and crawling like the sea over sand
Still I follow the heartlines on your hand,
This fantasy, this fallacy, this tumbling stone
Echoes of a city that’s long overgrown,
Your heart is the only place that I call home,
I cannot be returned.
- Florence + the Machine, “Hearlines.”

I’m not scared to jump, and I’m not scared to fall…if there was nowhere to land, I wouldn’t be scared, at all.
- Florence + the Machine, “Falling.”

As the tide washed in, the Dutch Tulip Man faced the ocean: “Conjoiner rejoinder poisoner concealer revelator. Look at it, rising up and rising down, taking everything with it.”
“What’s that?” Anna asked.
“Water,” the Dutchman said. “Well, and time.”
— Peter Van Houten, “An Imperial Affliction.”

Quand je serai petite
je partirai en voyage
avec mon sac de plumes.
Je choisirai d’aller loin
là-bas où il fait blanc
sur la banquise.
— Françoise Lison-Leroy, “Voyage Blanc.”

The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.
— J.M. Barrie, “Peter Pan.” 

When you’re happy, you enjoy the music. But, when you’re sad, you understand the lyrics.
— Frank Ocean

It’s a funny thing coming home. Nothing changes. Everything looks the same, feels the same, even smells the same. You realize what’s changed is you.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Some people bring out the worst in you, others bring out the best, and then there are those remarkably rare, addictive ones who just bring out the most. Of everything. They make you feel so alive that you’d follow them straight into hell, just to keep getting your fix.
— Karen Marie Moning