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Suburbs Quotes

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Suburbs Quotes

“If you want to see how far we have not come from the cave and the woods, from the lonely and dangerous days of the prarie or the plain, witness the reaction of a modern suburban family, nearly ready for bed, when the doorbell rings or the door is rattled. They will stop where they stand, or sit bolt upright in their beds, as if a streak of pure lightning has passed through the house. Eyes wide, voices fearful, they will whisper to each other, "There's someone at the door," in a way that might make you believe they have always feared and anticipated this moment - that they have spent their lives being stalked.”

FearSuburbs
Author:Alice McDermott
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“I urge you to imagine the interlaced abundance if, throughout suburbia, every stockade fence, every chain-linked boundary, were to be buried in varied greenery and each of them and every hedge transformed into a hedgerow. I ask you, at least, to open the door to some first guest that your party might begin.”

GrowthGardeningEcologyFenceSuburbsGreeneryNativesSuburbanPlanting A Tree
Book:Noah's Garden: Restoring the Ecology of Our Own Back Yards
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“...the reality of late summer and early autumn when Adelaide, more than any place on earth, and as simply as pouring tea from a pot, pours fourth from a lavish cornucopia into gardens and parks and markets and arcade stalls a cascade of carnations and grapes and melons, guavas and Michaelmas daisies and tomatoes, zinnias and belladonna lilies and tuberoses, lavender and quinces and cumquats and pomegranates, roses and roses and roses.”

SummerFruitAustraliaAutumnFlowersSuburbsBackyardsAdelaide
Book:Paper Chase
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“People who grew up in major cities may wonder why the hell I would act like it's a big deal to be unaccompanied in New York City at that age. It's populated with both adults and children, it's a functioning metropolis, Kevin McCallister was only ten in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, and that kid saved Christmas. Conversely, people from suburban areas act like my parents sent me wandering around the site of the Baby Jessica well, blindfolded and holding a flaming baton. So pick a side and prepare to judge me either way!”

ChildhoodSafetyAdolescenceShow BusinessCitySuburbs
Book:Scrappy Little Nobody
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“Only 15-20% of Rossmoor houses are “originals”—structures unchanged from their construction in the 1950s. The land is what’s valuable. People knock down the gingerbread cottages to build Mediterranean villas with no yards between them. I don’t want our family’s house to suffer that transformation.”

CaliforniaAmerican DreamSuburbsRossmoor
Book:Making Peace With Paradise: an autobiography of a California girl
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“The end result is that the United States is today a more segregated country in many respects than it was twenty years ago. Problems of education, transportation to jobs and decent living conditions are all made difficult because housing is so rigidly segregated. The expansion of suburbia and migration from the South have worsened big-city segregation. The suburbs are white nooses around the black necks of the cities. Housing deteriorates in central cities; urban renewal has been Negro removal and has benefited big merchants and real estate interests; and suburbs expand with little regard for what happens to the rest of America.”

CitiesHousingSegregationSuburbsGentrificationUrban RenewalSegregated Housing
Book:Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
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“...Me, I do not want to go to no suburbans not even Brooklyn. But Joyce wants to integrate. She says America has got two cultures, which should not he divided as they now is, so let's leave Harlem." "Don't you agree that Joyce is right?" "White is right," said Simple, "so I have always heard. But I never did believe it. White folks do so much wrong! Not only do they mistreat me, but they mistreats themselves. Right now, all they got their minds on is shooting off rockets and sending up atom bombs and poisoning the air and fighting wars and Jim Crowing the universe." "Why do you say 'Jim Crowing the universe'?" "Because I have not heard tell of no Negro astronaughts nowhere in space yet. This is serious, because if one of them white Southerners gets to the moon first, COLORED NOT ADMITTED signs will go up all over heaven as sure as God made little green apples, and Dixiecrats will be asking the man in the moon, 'Do you want your daughter to marry a Nigra?' Meanwhile, the N.A.A.C.P. will have to go to the Supreme Court, as usual, to get an edict for Negroes to even set foot on the moon. By that time, Roy Wilkins will be too old to make the trip, and me, too." "But perhaps the Freedom Riders will go into orbit on their own," I said. "Or Harlem might vote Adam Powell into the Moon Congress.'' "One thing I know," said Simple, "is that Martin Luther King will pray himself up there. The moon must be a halfway stop on the way to Glory, and King will probably be arrested. I wonder if them Southerners will take police dogs to the moon?”

IntegrationAfrican AmericansBlacksSegregationRace RelationsSuburbsJim Crow
Book:The Return of Simple
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“...Americans didn’t stick to cities, which makes us different from the people in other industrialized countries. We no sooner arrived in town, turning those towns into great mid-century metropolises, than we decided to take off for the green world beyond, so that by the 1970 Census, we had become the first suburban nation in the history of the world. And Detroit led the way, with a population curve up and down just like everywhere else, but with its urban decline a lot steeper over the past sixty years—so typical a place that it only looks like an exception.”

CitiesUnited StatesTownsDetroitSuburbsAmericansUrbanismSuburbanism
Author:Jerry Herron
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“Henceforth the crisis of urbanism is all the more concretely a social and political one, even though today no force born of traditional politics is any longer capable of dealing with it. Medico-sociological banalities on the 'pathology of housing projects,' the emotional isolation of people who must live in them, or the development of certain extreme reactions of rejection, chiefly among youth, simply betray the fact that modern capitalism, the bureaucratic society of consumption, is here and there beginning to shape its own setting. This society, with its new towns, is building the terrain that accurately represents it, combining the conditions most suitable for its proper functioning, while at the same time translating in space, in the clear language of organization of everyday life, its fundamental principle of alienation and constraint. It is likewise here that the new aspects of its crisis will be manifested with the greatest clarity.”

CapitalismAlienationCitySuburbsUrban PlanningSituationist153
Book:The Situationists and the City: A Reader
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“There is a widespread belief that americans hate cities. I think it is probable that Americans hate city failure, but, from the evidence, we certainly do not hate successful and vital city areas. On the contrary, so many people want to make use of such places, so many people want to work in them or live in them or visit in them, that municipal self-destruction ensues. In killing successful diversity combinations with money, we are employing perhaps our nearest equivalent to killing with kindness.”

CitiesSuburbsUrbanism255
Book:The Death and Life of Great American Cities
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“Submerged Suburbia by Stewart Stafford Fell out of bed, dragging my soul, Looked out the old goldfish bowl, To see suburbia was underwater, And I was engaged to Neptune’s daughter. There were buses like whales, Driven by aquatic snails, And jellyfish squatters, Chased by octopus coppers. Crab and lobster schoolkids, Scurried by making online bids, As a serial killer shark, Prowled for surfers before dark. Someone let the water out, And it all went down the spout, Flopping fish still tarried, But I got out of getting married. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”

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Author:Stewart Stafford
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“I read somewhere it is psychologically beneficial to stand near things greater and more powerful than you yourself, so as to dwarf yourself (and your piddlyass bothers) by comparison. To do so, the writer said, released the spirit from its everyday moorings, and accounted for why Montanans and Sherpas, who live near daunting mountains, aren't much at complaining or nettlesome introspection. He was writing about better "uses" to be made of skyscrapers, and if you ask me the guy was right on the money. All alone now beside the humming train cars, I actually do feel my moorings slacken, and I will say it again, perhaps for the last time: there is mystery everywhere, even in a vulgar, urine-scented, suburban depot such as this. You have only to let yourself in for it. You can never know what's coming next. Always there is the chance it will be--miraculous to say--something you want.”

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Book:The Sportswriter
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“You were thinking about how suburbs are perfect cradles for dreaming: they practically beg you to imagine another life, one lived at a burning voltage. The dreaming hidden in this place — murmuring beneath the comfort of the uniform gardens in their perfect rows, the mowed lawns, each driveway that bit too small for the two large cars — you couldn't have become what you are if you hadn't always been from this.”

AmbitionDream BigDaydreamingSuburbsEscapingNormalitySuburbiaBecoming BetterSuburban LifeSuburban
Book:Kala
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“Suburbia Knocks by Stewart Stafford Covert dawn's surreptitious light, A magpie sentry's warning song, Swooping, scanning silent streets, Cackling danger all night long. Metallic cross of crucified clothes, A choir of colours in the breeze, Waterboarded by lashing rain, Made them suffer incrementally. One knock for no, two knocks for yes, One and a half for uncertainty, Three knocks for drinks and company, The rite of suburban courtesy. 37 years ago, down at number 37, Came the first and last royal visit, Dizzying anticipation from first light, Fading fairytale in a curtsying gibbet. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.”

ClothesSuburbsSuburbiaMagpiesSuburban LifeSuburbanMagpieWaterboardingClotheslineWashing Line
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“Even though we lived in the Garden State, it was more important to display a beautiful lawn to our neighbors than to boast a bounty of healthy vegetables. I never saw one vegetable garden in my neighborhood nor in any of my friends’, until I planted one.”

VegetablesSuburbsVegetable GardenGarden StateSuburban Life
Book:Living Like The Future Matters: The Evolution of a Soil to Soul Entrepreneur
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“In the 1954 Internal Revenue Code, a Republican Congress changed forty-year, straight-line depreciation for buildings to permit 'accelerated depreciation' of greenfield income-producing property in seven years. By enabling owners to depreciate or write off the value of a building in such a short time, the law created a gigantic hidden subsidy for the developers of cheap new commercial buildings located on strips. Accelerated depreciation not only encouraged poor construction, it also discouraged maintenance...After time, the result was abandonment.”

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Book:Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000
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“In 1995 Bank of America issued a famous report on sprawl in California. The bank pronounced: 'Urban job centers have decentralized to the suburbs. New housing tracts have moved even deeper into agriculturally and environmentally sensitive areas. Private auto use continues to rise. This acceleration of sprawl has surfaced enormous social, environmental, and economic costs, which until now have been hidden, ignored, or quietly borne by society.”

SuburbsSprawl157
Book:Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000
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“We were the children of white flight, the first generation to grow up in postwar American suburbs. By the time the ’60s rolled around, many of us, the gay ones especially, were eager to make a U-turn and fly back the other way. Whether or not the city was obsolete, we couldn’t imagine our personal futures in any other form. The street and the skyline signified to us what the lawn and the highway signified to our parents: a place to breathe free.”

WayFirstsChildrenFormTurnsGrowsParentWhiteCitiesGrowing UpImagineGenerationsStreetsGayBreatheFlightHighwaysObsoleteSuburbsLawnsSkylines
Author:Herbert Muschamp
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“You need to take small steps when you dream big dreams. I am a published author with dyslexia, a professional speaker who was in speech therapy for three years as a child because I had a lisp; and a slow stiff kid from the suburbs who became an All-Pro in the NFL.”

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Book:Heart of a Student Athlete: All-Pro Advice for Competitors and Their Families
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“Simplicity in its essence demands neither a vow of poverty nor a life of rural homesteading. As an ethic of self-conscious material moderation, it can be practiced in cities and suburbs, townhouses and condominiums. It requires neither a log cabin nor a hairshirt but a deliberate ordering of priorities so as to distinguish between the necessary and superfluous, useful and wasteful, beautiful and vulgar.”

SelfBeautifulCitiesPovertyMaterialsDemandEthicsConsciousEssenceSimplicityPrioritiesConsumerismModerationVulgarDeliberateVowSelf ConsciousSuburbsOverconsumptionSuperfluousCabinsHomesteadingLog Cabins
Author:David Shi
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“The reality is that our economy now consists of driving 250 million vehicles around the suburbs and malls and eating fried chicken. We don't manufacture much. We just burn up ever scarcer petroleum in the ever-expanding suburbs built with mortgage money lent to people who haven't a clue.”

PeopleRealityMillionsEconomyHavensEatingBuiltDrivingChickensVehicleConsumerismClueExpandingMortgageSuburbsMallsOverconsumptionFried ChickenPetroleum
Book:Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War
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“Wilderness is not only a haven for native plants and animals but it is also a refuge from society. Its a place to go to hear the wind and little else, see the stars and the galaxies, smell the pine trees, feel the cold water, touch the sky and the ground at the same time, listen to coyotes, eat the fresh snow, walk across the desert sands, and realize why its good to go outside of the city and the suburbs. Fortunately, there is wilderness just outside the limits of the cities and the suburbs in most of the United States, especially in the West.”

FeelsLittlesStatesStarsWaterRealizingWalksAnimalUnitedCitiesUnited StatesTreeSkyHavensWindColdLimitsPlantWestSmellSnowDesertSandNativeWildernessRefugeGalaxySuburbsPlaces To GoPlants And AnimalsCold WaterCoyotesPine TreesDesert SandFresh Snow
Author:John Muir
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“Living on the street as a kid changed the way I looked at everything. It was a different time and while it had its dangers, it was nothing like it would be today. It was the Summer of Love and there was a real sense of community among us. We were hippies who looked out for each other instead of trying to rip each other off. We only had to watch out for the police who liked to roust us just on general principles, and the kids who came in from the suburbs to do a little hippie-bashing.”

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Author:Charles de Lint
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