city

Los Angeles is a true postmodern city. Here, we celebrate with equal aplomb the high and the low. I am just as influenced by the punk rock attitude of local skate and surf cultures as I am by old-school glamour and stardust.

I guess I just always had this idea that I would go to Hollywood. I had the typical 'get up and go' attitude that you have to have in order to make the brave step into the big city.

We can revolutionize the attitude of inner city brown and black kids to learning. We need a civil rights movement within the African-American community.

Business as usual will not be accepted by any part of this city.

Years ago I wanted to buy an apartment in New York City. I was a single female - I had gone through my divorce - I had three children, I was in show business and black. It was, like, impossible.

City life is stressful. Everybody is running around like crazy, stuck in traffic jams trying to make meetings, trying to make ends meet, trying to meet deadlines, trying to get kids to and from activities. There aren't enough hours in the day for all this business.

But there was nothing. No village or town as far as her eyes could strain. Nowhere for her saviours to come from and take her to; just fields and trees and the weeping arc of the river Greave all the way to the horizon. Just like in the books, Greaveburn was all there was; building and building until streets were foundations, roofs were floors, constantly climbing away from itself. now that Abrasia saw it, her dream of escape crumbled completely like an ancient map in her fingers. The horizon was the world's edge and there was nothing beyond it but mist and falling.Greaveburn stood alone on this little circle of earth, the river running around and into itself like a snake eating its tail. And Abrasia was doomed to watch the sun and stars trade places for all eternity.

This is what I__e always loved about a city, all the worlds hidden away inside, largest of aquariums.

You know," he said, his voice making me feel cold in spite of the heat, "this city can get ahold of you and pull you back no matter how hard you try to climb out. Like a grave.

I walked the streets and tasted the golden sun that lay across the city.

For brick and mortar breed filth and crime,With a pulse of evil that throbs and beats;And men are whithered before their primeBy the curse paved in with the lanes and streets.And lungs are poisoned and shoulders bowed, In the smothering reek of mill and mine;And death stalks in on the struggling crowd__ut he shuns the shadow of the oak and pine

It is perfectly banal to establish a city in the middle of nature but it is perfectly extraordinary to establish nature in the middle of a city! Ordinary nations do the first, extraordinary nations do the second!

The brown book I carry says there is nothing stranger than to explore a city wholly different from all those one knows, since to do so is to explore a second and unsuspected self. I have found a thing stranger: to explore such a city only after one has lived in it for some time without learning anything of it.

So now I lye by Day and toss or rave by Night, since the ratling and perpetual Hum of the Town deny me rest: just as Madness and Phrensy are the vapours which rise from the lower Faculties, so the Chaos of the Streets reaches up even to the very Closet here and I am whirl'd about by cries of Knives to Grind and Here are your Mouse-Traps. I was last night about to enter the Shaddowe of Rest when a Watch-man, half-drunken, thumps at the Door with his Past Three-a-clock and his Rainy Wet Morning. And when at length I slipp'd into Sleep I had no sooner forgot my present Distemper than I was plunged into a worse: I dreamd my self to be lying in a small place under ground, like unto a Grave, and my Body was all broken while others sung. And there was a Face that did so terrifie me that I had like to have expired in my Dream. Well, I will say no more.

We get so used to the gregarious nature of our towns and villages that we forget how crowded our existence has become.

You cannot defend your design without knowing what you're designing for.

What are you thinking?_ he asked in a disarmingly gentle tone.__hat the city looks different depending on whom I__ seeing it with.__e nodded easily, as if this same thought had occurred to him. __ notice different things,_ I continued. __ike with you, I pay more attention to the details of the buildings _ the textures, the colors, the people standing in front of them. The reflections are different.___eflections?_ he asked quietly.__hey are._ I watched our bodies morph and distort in the window of an empty bank. __ou__e there,_ I said. __hat__ how they__e different.

An age-old city is like a pond. With its colours and reflections. Its chills and murk. Its ferment, its sorcery, its hidden life.A city is like a woman, with a woman__ desires and dislikes. Her abandon and restraint. Her reserve - above all, her reserve.To get to the heart of a city, to learn its most subtle secrets, takes infinite tenderness, and patience sometimes to the point of despair. It calls for an artlessly delicate touch, a more or less unconditional love. Over centuries.Time works for those who place themselves beyond time.You__e no true Parisian, you do not know your city, if you haven__ experienced its ghosts. To become imbued with shades of grey, to blend into the drab obscurity of blind spots, to join the clammy crowd that emerges, or seeps, at certain times of day from the metros, railway stations, cinemas or churches, to feel a silent and distant brotherhood with the lonely wanderer, the dreamer in his shy solitude, the crank, the beggar, even the drunk - all this entails a long and difficult apprenticeship, a knowledge of people and places that only years of patient observation can confer.