Cities Quotes by Jonathan Raban

Jonathan Raban

At night, what you see is a city, because all you see is lights. By day, it doesn’t look like a city at all. The trees out-number the houses. And that’s completely typical of Seattle. You can’t quite tell: is it a city, is it a suburb, is the forest growing back?

Cities

Light

Night

Jonathan Raban

In rural areas the majority of the victims of violent crime know their assailants (indeed, are probably married to them); in cities, the killer and the mugger come out of the anonymous dark, their faces unrecognized, their motives obscure.

Cities

Dark

Majority

Jonathan Raban

In the city one clings to nostalgic and unreal signs of community, takes forced refuge in codes, badges and coteries; the city’s life, of surfaces and locomotion, usually seems too dangerous and demanding to live through with any confidence.

Cities

Community

Nostalgic

Jonathan Raban

Seattle is a liberal city, its politics not so much blue in the American, not the British, sense as deep ultramarine, and its manners are studiously polite.

Blue

Cities

Manners

Jonathan Raban

Seattle was built out on pilings over the sea, and at high tide the whole city seemed to come afloat like a ship lifting free from a mud berth and swaying in its chains.

Cities

Sea

Tides

Jonathan Raban

Simply as a writer of books I’m thrilled and proud that Seattle should have raised, on a public vote, sufficient money to build a central library, and moreover to rebuild every other library in the city: 28 of them.

Book

Cities

Should Have

Jonathan Raban

To the newcomer who has not learned its language, a large city is a chaos of details, a vast Woolworths store of differently colored, simlarly priced objects.

Chaos

Cities

Details

Follow The Behaviour University in order to get the greatest quotes from the greatest people of all time so that you can tap into your own greatness.

Liv Ullmann

Oliver Goldsmith

Barbara Boxer

John F. Kerry

Nickolas Ashford

Acceptance

Angel

Art

Audacity

Bars

Blue

Book

Brave

Chaos

Character

Cities

Community

Dark

Destination

Details

Discipline

Distance

Drama

Dream

Easier

Eden

Essentials

Fall

Family

Father

Home

House

Junk

Law

Light

Loneliness

Long

Majority

Make Things Happen

Manners

Memories

Mom

Night

Nostalgic

Notebook

People

Presidential

Principles

Prose

Sake

Sea

Should Have

Sides

Society

Soul

Thinking

Tides

Trouble

Verbs

White

Wise

Cities Quotes by Jonathan Raban

At night, what you see is a city, because all you see is lights. By day, it doesn’t look like a city at all. The trees out-number the houses. And that’s completely typical of Seattle. You can’t quite tell: is it a city, is it a suburb, is the forest growing back?

In rural areas the majority of the victims of violent crime know their assailants (indeed, are probably married to them); in cities, the killer and the mugger come out of the anonymous dark, their faces unrecognized, their motives obscure.

In the city one clings to nostalgic and unreal signs of community, takes forced refuge in codes, badges and coteries; the city’s life, of surfaces and locomotion, usually seems too dangerous and demanding to live through with any confidence.

Seattle is a liberal city, its politics not so much blue in the American, not the British, sense as deep ultramarine, and its manners are studiously polite.

Seattle was built out on pilings over the sea, and at high tide the whole city seemed to come afloat like a ship lifting free from a mud berth and swaying in its chains.

Simply as a writer of books I’m thrilled and proud that Seattle should have raised, on a public vote, sufficient money to build a central library, and moreover to rebuild every other library in the city: 28 of them.

To the newcomer who has not learned its language, a large city is a chaos of details, a vast Woolworths store of differently colored, simlarly priced objects.

Get Social with TBU

Cities Quotes by

Liv Ullmann

Oliver Goldsmith

Barbara Boxer

John F. Kerry

Nickolas Ashford

Topics by Jonathan Raban

Menu

Menu