Neighborhood Quotes

“To you, the beautiful human in you, who, like everybody else on this planet, is on an everyday struggle to love and be loved. I hope you find the love, happiness, and enlightenment you have been looking for, in you, in your backyard, in your wretched little neighborhood.”
― Merlin Franco, Saint Richard Parker

“Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbor's buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“Shortly before school started, I moved into a studio apartment on a quiet street near the bustle of the downtown in one of the most self-conscious bends of the world. The “Gold Coast” was a neighborhood that stretched five blocks along the lake in a sliver of land just south of Lincoln Park and north of River North. The streets were like fine necklaces and strung together were the brownstone houses and tall condominiums and tiny mansions like pearls, and when the day broke and the sun faded away, their lights burned like jewels shining gaudily in the night.
The world’s most elegant bazaar, Michigan Avenue, jutted out from its eastern tip near The Drake Hotel and the timeless blue-green waters of Lake Michigan pressed its shores. The fractious make-up of the people that inhabited it, the flat squareness of its parks and the hint of the lake at the ends of its tree-lined streets squeezed together a domesticated cesspool of age and wealth and standing. It was a place one could readily dress up for an expensive dinner at one of the fashionable restaurants or have a drink miles high in the lounge of the looming John Hancock Building and five minutes later be out walking on the beach with pants cuffed and feet in the cool water at the lake’s edge.”
― Daniel Amory, Minor Snobs

“He said that for those who hadn't been to California, what it was most like was an enchanted island. The spitting image. Just like in the movies, but better. People live in houses, not apartment buildings, he said, and then he embarked on a comparison of houses (one-story, at most two-story), and four- or five-story buildings where the elevator is broken one day and out of order the next. The only way buildings compared favorably to houses was in terms of proximity. A neighborhood of buildings makes distances shorter, he said. Everything is closer. You can go walking to buy groceries or you can walk to your local tavern (here he winked at Reverend Foster), or the local church you belong to, or a museum. In other words, you don't need to drive. You don't even need a car. And here he recited a list of statistics on fatal car accidents in a county of Detroit and a county of Los Angeles. And that's even considering that cars are made in Detroit, he said, not Los Angeles.”
― Roberto Bolaño, 2666

“People could get used to any change. All we needed was time.”
― Megan Miranda, Such a Quiet Place

“The principles of neighborhood and subsistence will be disparaged by the globalists as 'protectionism' — and that is exactly what it is. It is a protectionism that is just and sound, because it protects local producers and is the best assurance of adequate supplies to local consumers. And the idea that local needs should be met first and only surpluses exported does not imply any prejudice against charity toward people in other places or trade with them. The principle of neighborhood at home always implies the principle of charity abroad. And the principle of subsistence is in fact the best guarantee of giveable or marketable surpluses. This kind of protection is not 'isolationism.”
― Wendell Berry

“Their neighbors in Penn Villas are strangers, transients – accountants, salesmen, supervisors, adjusters – people whose lives to them are passing can and the shouts of unseen children.”
― John Updike, Rabbit Redux

“One person caring for one neighborhood, that's how we'll change the world, not with policy and policing.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Şehit Sevda Society: Even in Death I Shall Live

“Local and state governments can help civil society by building towns and cities in ways more conducive to neighborliness and community building. Walkability is a big thing. Mixing residential and commercial development would create real neighborhoods where people can walk to the corner store for a gallon of milk and run into their neighbors. It could allow for “third places” like neighborhood pubs, barbershops, and sandwich shops.”
― Timothy P. Carney, Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse

“You look at a neighborhood like this and see a slum. I see the garden I was meant to tend.”
― Elizabeth Camden, Carved in Stone

“Nutty Community (The Sonnet)

Crazy am I, crazy are you,
When crazy together, we live anew.
Miserable am I, miserable are you,
When miserable together, I find joy in you.
Broken am I, broken are you,
When broken together, we are each other's glue.
Insecure am I, insecure are you,
When insecure together, we find it all untrue.
Disfunctional am I, disfunctional are you,
When disfunctional together, we function well.
Fallen am I, fallen are you,
When we fall together, we'll rise sure as hell.
Let us go against ourselves in defying self-centricity.
You be a nut, I'll be a nut, let's build a nutty community.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Handcrafted Humanity: 100 Sonnets For A Blunderful World

“I came to understand more broadly that the look and feel of our communities has a profound effect on the collective mental state of the people living there.”
― Antong Lucky, A Redemptive Path Forward: From Incarceration to a Life of Activism

“In the north of Tehran, right by the foothills of Tehran’s bit of the Alborz mountain range is Niavaran. The district is an entanglement of slopes and roads where way back in the day, going back to the Qajar era, villas and houses were all you would see. Now though it has become an extension of the city center with buildings and towers scattered across its narrow roads. Even with all of the congestion, the weather is a few degrees cooler than the rest of the city and it remains one of the “port out, starboard home” districts in Tehran.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish

“The Night Bomber by Stewart Stafford

Stefan and Elyse came home by rote,
To find a stranger's chilling note,
"I’m going to kill you" scrawled in red,
Pranks locked out with nothing said.

Then the hall window smashed,
In a firework’s screaming flash,
They threw it out before it burned,
Danger had not passed, they learned.

A ticking device left behind,
Elyse kicked it away just in time,
A garden explosion's massive bang,
Their ears and windows loudly rang.

They wondered what psycho did this deed,
And how they'd crossed this evil breed,
Then they heard them bomb their neighbours
who thought Stefan and Elyse were perpetrators.

Then another blast three doors down,
Stefan ran to help with a worried frown,
Concerned to see who else got hit,
Seeing their attacker was still at it.

A bomber in a ski mask did a backflip,
To dodge their lunging, angry grip,
He swung on ropes and vaulted high,
An acrobat mocking with a stylish eye.

The bomber fled in his getaway car,
A neighbour leapt on before he got far,
He held on tight but got dragged along,
Rolled to the kerb, he couldn't hold on.

The Night Bomber of Sheila’s Cabin
On the loose, an explosive phantom,
Stalking without any reason or pity,
His laughter echoed across the city.

© Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Part of being a good neighbor is respecting what your close neighbors are telling you.”
― Steven Magee

“I would not do any home upgrade that a close neighbor was objecting to. It is just a recipe for a future bad relationship.”
― Steven Magee

“Because you know what’s more terrifying? The thought of never feeling happy again.”
― Alexandra Potter, One Good Thing

“All you need is one good thing to turn your life around and make it worth living again.”
― Alexandra Potter, One Good Thing

“She was just so annoying; the way she was going on at you, trying to get gossip under the guise of being concerned.”
― Alexandra Potter, One Good Thing

“But here’s the thing: shock and disbelief don’t simply disappear overnight. Worse still, you don’t want to disappoint or burden anyone by admitting you’re still not over it. That last weekend you weren’t really busy; you just couldn’t face getting dressed. That the future, which used to seem so secure, now scares the living daylights out of you.”
― Alexandra Potter, One Good Thing

“It would be like a stranger coming up to you and giving you a kiss”, Dr Khan had explained.”
― Alexandra Potter, One Good Thing

“Now no one greets me. When I close the front door there’s no one to talk to or share things with.”
― Alexandra Potter, One Good Thing

“I wanted to run away from everything, I say simply. I wanted to disappear. To leave it all behind and make a new life for myself.”
― Alexandra Potter, One Good Thing

“It’s forced me to slow down, to stop rushing about, to look and listen. To really notice things. And I’ve realized that actually the countryside is far more alive and invigorating than any city. I mean, just look at that landscape.”
― Alexandra Potter, One Good Thing

“How could she simply disappear from our lives like that and not come back? It’s been two years, and I know she’s not coming back. I still have conversations with her in my head, though.”
― Alexandra Potter, One Good Thing

“Loss and grief don’t magically disappear; they just find a different outlet. You have to find a way to deal with it, and we dealt with it in different ways.”
― Alexandra Potter, One Good Thing

“Like all these years I thought it was the men who were the commitment-phobes. But actually it was me all along.”
― Alexandra Potter, One Good Thing

“I was scared of being trapped. Making a mistake. Needing someone. Scared of letting someone in, in case they let me down. In case they broke my heart.”
― Alexandra Potter, One Good Thing

“I needed to protect myself, so my world would never collapse again, like it did when my mum died.”
― Alexandra Potter, One Good Thing

“And maybe some relationships don’t even start. Maybe they’re only a spark and, if you don’t catch it quickly enough, it goes out.”
― Alexandra Potter, One Good Thing