Malls Quotes

“Deserts possess a particular magic, since they have exhausted their own futures, and are thus free of time. Anything erected there, a city, a pyramid, a motel, stands outside time. It's no coincidence that religious leaders emerge from the desert. Modern shopping malls have much the same function. A future Rimbaud, Van Gogh or Adolf Hitler will emerge from their timeless wastes.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition

“There is no weather in malls.”
― Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love

“The real Santa Claus is at the mall.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Lump of Coal

“Since the Leeburg Pike [at Tyson's Corner] carries six to eight lanes of fast-moving traffic and the mall lacks an obvious pedestrian entrance, I decided to negotiate the street in my car rather than on foot. This is a problem planners call the 'drive to lunch syndrome,' typical of edge nodes where nothing is planned in advance and all the development takes place in isolated 'pods'.”
― Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000

“When the kids see how amazing one seed turning in to beautiful flower and transformation to a juicy red strawberries then We are saving our future, it is not a product anymore that they used to grab in the supermarket but it is magic of life and with urban farming we doing this. @ K11”
― Baris Gencel

“Malls in the late forties and early fifties were risky. Suburban customers still believed in making major purchases in the central business districts of cities and towns, where they expected to find the greatest selection of merchandise and the most competitive prices. After the tax laws of 1954, this changed. Shopping mall developers were among the biggest beneficiaries of accelerated depreciation, and they most often located projects where the older strips met the new interchanges of major projects. With the new tax write-offs, over 98 percent of malls made money for their investors.”
― Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000

“It has been a frustrating game thus far and [the natives] blow off steam by spending money. Happily there is retail at every turn so the crow doesn’t lack for buying opportunities, and it’s the same everywhere Bravo has been, the airports, the hotels, the arenas and convention centers, in the downtowns and the suburbs alike, retail dominates the land. Somewhere along the way America became a giant mall with a country attached.”
― Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

“I mean, then you hafta listen to all this “The mall? Again?” hassle and “Did you do your homework?” and “Your grades would be up where they could be if you spent as much time in math as you do in the mall, young lady.” Ick.”
― Jane Yolen, Vampires: A Collection of Original Stories

“He passed a hair salon called Snip Away, which sounded more like a vasectomy clinic than a beauty parlor. The Snip Away beauticians were either reformed mall girls or guys named Mario whose fathers were named Sal. Two patrons sat in a window - one getting a perm, the other a bleach job. Who wanted that? Who wanted to sit in a window and have the whole world watch you get your hair done?”
― Harlan Coben, Back Spin

“People often tell me that they get lost in malls. Malls are a habitat. Some of us are natives. If you grew up hiking, you know to look for blazes. If you grew up with malls, you know to look for the anchor stores, the fountain, the food court. Orient yourself to those cardinal points before you set out.”
― Alexandra Lange, Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall

“These early successes were a boon to developers, who could now confidently double their shopping area and add the final technological breakthrough that made a mall a mall: air-conditioning.”
― Alexandra Lange, Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall

“If I die and there is a hell, my hell will be a shopping mall. I will trudge down its aisles forever, with only rides on the escalators for relief.”
― Andrei Codrescu

“I take a stroll through the mall every day, and every day I see people taking paraplegic family members out for a window-shopping excursion and paletas, and against the backdrop of of loud club beats it makes me sad. I'm just this sad bitch.”
― Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, The Undocumented Americans