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Asphalt Quotes

Browse 45 quotes about Asphalt.

Asphalt Quotes

“When faced with unbridled wildness of reality, dinosaurs fall into fevered delusions of grandeur. In fits of madness, they recreate the world in their own overblown image, bull-dozing the wild and replacing it with a wasteland that reflects their own emptiness. Where there was once the incredibly complex diversity of nature, there is now the dead simplicity of asphalt and concrete.”

RealityNatureMadnessEmptinessAnarchyConcreteAnarchismDinosaursWastelandDelusionsAsphaltCrimethincPoltics
Book:Anarchy in the Age of Dinosaurs
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“Shirts and jeans litter the asphalt, the empty fabric limbs askew as if they're attempting to escape. Blood smears Sarah's lips as she struggles against the chest of a dirty looking man with a beard. Terror. Terror is the only word my mind can seize on and it forgets what it means. I forget how to think - to move.”

GirlFriendshipBloodCrimeHorrorClothesPoliceLipsTerrorTeenagerFabricAssaultJeansRapeCityBeardCreepySidewalkCriminalDenimAsphaltChestHoboGrabMugging
Book:Placid Girl
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“[London is] like the sight of a heavy sea from a rowing boat in the middle of the Atlantic.... One lives in it, afloat but half submerged in a heavy flood of brick, stone, asphalt, slate, steel, glass, concrete, and tarmac, seeing nothing fixable beyond a few score white spires that splash up like spits of foam above the next glum wave of dirty buildings.”

NextWhiteHalfSeeingSeaMiddleBuildingStonesSightGlassesWaveHeavyLondonBoatDirtyScoreConcreteFloodSteelBricksSpitRowingSlateFoamSubmergedSpiresAsphalt
Book:Mr. Beluncle: A Novel
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“What is it in man that for a long while lies unknown and unseen only one day to emerge and push him into a new land of the eye, a new region of the mind, a place he has never dreamed of? Maybe it's like the force in spores lying quietly under asphalt until the day they push a soft, bulbous mushroom head right through the pavement. There's nothing you can do to stop it.”

MenMindLongEyeLyingForceCan DoLandOne DayRegionsUnseenMushroomsPavementAsphalt
Author:William Least Heat-Moon
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“Dimension stone, flint, rubble, burnt or unburnt brick, use them as you find them. For it is not every neighborhood or particular locality that can have a wall built of burnt brick like that at Babylon, where there was plenty of asphalt to take the place of lime and sand, and yet possibly each may be provided with materials of equal usefulness so that out of them a faultless wall may be built to last forever.”

MayUseLastsForeverParticularMaterialsWallEqualBuiltStonesPlentyDimensionsSandNeighborhoodBricksUsefulnessBabylonRubbleLimesLocalityAsphalt
Author:Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
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“In my old age, I have come to believe that love is not a noun but a verb. An action. Like water, it flows to its own current. If you were to corner it in a dam, true love is so bountiful it would flow over. Even in separation, even in death, it moves and changes. It lives within memory, in the haunting of a touch, the transience of a smell, or the nuance of a sigh. It seeks to leave a trace like a fossil in the sand, a leaf burning into baking asphalt.”

IfsBelieveAgeActionMovingWaterMemoriesLove IsFlowCurrentsCornersSmellSeparationOld AgeBurningSandLeafsSighFossilsHauntingBakingVerbsNuanceNounsTrue Love IsDamsTransienceAsphalt
Author:Alyson Richman
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“The dog writhing in the gutter, its back broken by a passing car, knows what it is to be alive. So too with the aged elk of the far north woods, slowly dying in the bitter cold of winter. The asphalt upon which the dog lies knows no pain. The snow upon which the elk has collapsed knows not the cold. But living beings do.”

KnowsPainLyingAliveDyingDogCarBrokenColdWinterWoodsPassingSnowPassingsBitterGuttersNo PainAsphaltElkBitter Cold
Author:George Greenstein
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“A man could be a lover and defender of the wilderness without ever in his lifetime leaving the boundaries of asphalt, powerlines, and right-angled surfaces. We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may never need to set foot in it. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope; without it the life of the cities would drive all men into crime or drugs or psychoanalysis.”

MenNeedsMayCitiesFeetCrimePossibilityLoversDrugLifetimeEnvironmentalLeavingSurfaceBoundariesWildernessRefugePsychoanalysisDefendersAsphalt
Book:Desert Solitaire
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“Oh Beautiful for smoggy skies, insecticided grain, For strip-mined mountain's majesty above the asphalt plain. America, America, man sheds his waste on thee, And hides the pines with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea.”

MenAmericaBeautifulSongNatureEnvironmentSeaSkyMountainWasteEnvironmentalTheePollutionGrainShedEcologyConservationMajestyMother EarthEarth DayNature And EnvironmentSave Mother EarthBillboardsGreen EarthNature ConservationWorld EnvironmentBeautiful EarthAir PollutionWorld Earth DayAsphaltWater Pollution
Author:George Carlin
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“Amory wondered how people could fail to notice that he was a boy marked for glory, and when faces of the throng turned toward him and ambiguous eyes stared into his, he assumed the most romantic of expressions and walked on the air cushions that lie on the asphalts of fourteen.”

PeopleEyeFacesLyingBoysFailingAirExpressionGloryFourteenAmbiguousCushionsMost RomanticAsphalt
Book:The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works
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“And I saw it didn't matter who had loved me or who I loved. I was alone. The black oily asphalt, the slick beauty of the Iranian attendant, the thickening clouds--nothing was mine. And I understood finally, after a semester of philosophy, a thousand books of poetry, after death and childbirth and the startled cries of men who called out my name as they entered me, I finally believed I was alone, felt it in my actual, visceral heart, heard it echo like a thin bell.”

MenHeartBookMatterPhilosophyNamesFeltBlackSawsHeardCryMinesThousandUnderstoodCloudsBellsEchoesAfter DeathChildbirthIranianVisceralSlickSemesterAsphalt
Book:What we carry: poems
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“It was the day of the worms. That first almost-warm, after-the-rainy-night day in April, when you bolt from your house to find yourself in a world of worms. They were as numerous here in the East End as they had been in the West. The sidewalks, the streets. The very places where they didn't belong. Forlorn, marooned on concrete and asphalt, no place to burrow, April's orphans.”

WorldFirstsEndsNightHouseStreetsWestWarmEastFinding YourselfConcreteWormsAprilOrphanBoltsRainySidewalkForlornAsphaltRainy Night
Book:Maniac Magee
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“How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life?”

MenLongMadeQualityEnvironmentGrowingSeeingSkyDyingFieldsWindWallWalkingMachinesEnvironmentalOilBreathingThriveAviationGrainEcologyConservationCoalBricksOur EnvironmentQuality Of LifeMother EarthMineralsPavementNature And EnvironmentSave Mother EarthNature ConservationGreen LivingAsphalt
Author:Charles Lindbergh
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“Out of the silver heat mirage he ran. The sky burned, and under him the paving was a black mirror reflecting sun-fire. Sweat sprayed his skin with each foot strike so that he ran in a hot mist of his own creation. With each slap on the softened asphalt, his soles absorbed heat that rose through his arches and ankles and the stems of his shins. It was a carnival of pain, but he loved each stride because running distilled him to his essence and the heat hastened this distillation.”

RunningPainBlackSunFireFeetSkyCreationSkinsEssenceHotMirrorsRoseStrikesRanHeatSilverSweatBurnedStemReflectingMistSlapInspirational RunningStrideAnklesArchesMiragesCarnivalsAsphaltPavingDistillation
Author:James Tabor
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“Probably no single event highlights the strength of Campbell's argument (on peak oil) better than the rapid development of the Alberta tar sands. Bitumen, the world's ugliest and most expensive hydrocarbon, can never be a reasonable substitute for light oil due to its extreme capital, energy, and carbon intensity. Bitumen looks, smells, and behaves like asphalt; running an economy on it is akin to digging up our existing road infrastructure, melting it down, and enriching the goop with hydrogen until it becomes a sulfur-rich but marketable oil.”

WorldLooksLightRunningEnergyEconomyRichEventsDevelopmentArgumentDown AndExtremesSmellDuesOilBehaveReasonableExpensiveGlobal WarmingSandSubstitutesIntensityCarbonInfrastructureRapidsMeltingDiggingHighlightsHydrogenEnrichingAsphaltAlbertaPeak OilHydrocarbonsSulfur
Author:Andrew Nikiforuk
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“Mr. Huston (directed Marilyn in Asphalt Jungle and The Misfits) was an exciting looking man. He was tall, long-faced, and his hair was mussed. He interrupted everybody with outbursts of laughter as if he were drunk. But he wasn’t drunk. He was just happy for some mysterious reason, and he was also a genius – the first I had ever met”

IfsMenFirstsLongReasonHairGeniusMetsLaughterExcitingDrunkMysteriousTallJungleInterruptedMisfitsOutburstAsphalt
Author:Marilyn
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“Woods and forests have been essentialt to the imagination of these islands, and of countries throughout the world, for centuries. It is for this reason that when woods are felled, when they are suppressed by tarmac and concrete and asphalt, it is not only unique species and habitats that disappear, but also unique memories, unique forms of thought.”

WorldHas BeensCountryReasonFormImaginationMemoriesCenturyUniqueSpeciesWoodsDisappearForestsIslandsConcreteHabitatAsphaltWoods And Forests
Book:The Wild Places
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“In a future that portends stronger and more-frequent hurricanes striking North America's Atlantic coast, ferocious winds will pummel tall, unsteady structures. Some will topple, knocking down others. Like a gap in the forest when a giant tree falls, new growth will rush in. Gradually, the asphalt jungle will give way to a real one.”

WayGivingRealAmericaFallGrowthCitiesTreeWindStrongerStructureForestsGiantsGapsTallCoastJungleHurricanesKnockingNorth AmericaReal OnesAsphaltNew Growth
Author:Alan Weisman
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“The street curves in and out, up and down in great waves of asphalt; at night the granite tomb is noisy with starlings like the creaking of many axles; only the tired walker know how much there is to climb, how the sidewalk curves into the cold wind.”

KnowsNightWalksKnow HowJourneyStreetsWindColdWalkingTiredWaveWanderClimbsHikingCurvesUp And DownTombsTrekkingStrollingNoisySaunteringSidewalkWalkersGraniteAsphaltStarlingsCold Wind
Book:The Poems of Charles Reznikoff: 1918-1975
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