Streets Quotes

“There’s something about arriving in new cities, wandering empty streets with no destination. I will never lose the love for the arriving, but I'm born to leave.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, Empty Roads & Broken Bottles: in search for The Great Perhaps

“To hear never-heard sounds,
To see never-seen colors and shapes,
To try to understand the imperceptible
Power pervading the world;
To fly and find pure ethereal substances
That are not of matter
But of that invisible soul pervading reality.
To hear another soul and to whisper to another soul;
To be a lantern in the darkness
Or an umbrella in a stormy day;
To feel much more than know.
To be the eyes of an eagle, slope of a mountain;
To be a wave understanding the influence of the moon;
To be a tree and read the memory of the leaves;
To be an insignificant pedestrian on the streets
Of crazy cities watching, watching, and watching.
To be a smile on the face of a woman
And shine in her memory
As a moment saved without planning.”
― Dejan Stojanovic

“People on the streets are dehumanized the same way settlers dehumanized the Indigenous, to steal the land of abundance at gunpoint, to tax the land to the fullest.”
― San Mateo, San Mateo: Proof of The Divine

“So I find words I never thought to speak

In streets I never thought I should revisit

When I left my body on a distant shore.”
― T.S. Eliot

“I regained my soul through literature after those times I'd lost it to wild-eyed gypsy girls on the European streets.”
― Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy

“It was true that the city could still throw shadows filled with mystifying figures from its past, whose grip on the present could be felt on certain strange days, when the streets were dark with rain and harmful ideas.”
― Christopher Fowler, Ten Second Staircase

“Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...”
― T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems

“I've wandered through the real world, and written myself through the darkness of the streets inside me. I see people walking through the city and wonder where they've been, and what the moments of their lives have done to them. If they're anything like me, their moments have held them up and shot them down.
Sometimes I just survive.
But sometimes I stand on the rooftop of my existence, arms stretched out, begging for more.
That's when the stories show up in me.
They find me all the time.
They're made of underdogs and fighters. They're made of hunger and desire and trying to live decent.
The only trouble is, I don't know which of those stories comes first.
Maybe they all just merge into one.
We'll see, I guess.
I'll let you know when I decide.”
― Markus Zusak, Getting the Girl

“I spry my closed vision over
the streets of this city and the shadows lurching within it.”
― Suman Pokhrel

“She was perfectly sane in streets unknown. She loved conversing with people tagged as strangers. She was social, amiable & all that is her. Yet, with known people she felt unknown, she choked words and fought inside. And indeed she tripped insane while traversing those streets known. She stared at others and consumed their happiness through senses cold. And so she waits for Winter's warmth to touch her in streets of distant shore, in her own world of simple happiness.”
― Debatrayee Banerjee

“For a dark street, sunshine is most welcome; for a wounded soul, love is most welcome!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Nothing belongs to itself anymore.
These trees are yours because you once looked at them.
These streets are yours because you once traversed them.
These coffee shops and bookshops, these cafés and bars, their sole owner is you.
They gave themselves so willingly, surrendering to your perfume.
You sang with the birds and they stopped to listen to you.
You smiled at the sheepish stars and they fell into your hair.
The sun and moon, the sea and mountain, they have all left from heartbreak.
Nothing belongs to itself anymore.
You once spoke to Him, and then God became yours.
He sits with us in darkness now
to plot how to make you ours.” K.K.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“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.”
― Jerry Spinelli, Maniac Magee

“Lampposts look, in the glow of their defeated light, robbed by the fog, but cannot tell if the streets, lying by stretching limbs in courtyards, are sleeping face downwards or supine.”
― Suman Pokhrel

“In my father's last letter he said that the world is run by those willing to take the responsibility for the running of it. If it is life that you feel you are missing I can tell you where to find it. In the law courts, in business, in government. There is nothing occurring in the streets. Nothing but a dumbshow composed of the helpless and the impotent.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Suttree

“I am not your dog that you whistle for; I’m not a stray animal you call over, and I am not, I never have been, nor will I ever be, your “baby”!”
― Joy Jennings, I'm Not Your "Baby": An Australian woman's tortured life of sexual harassment and assault

“A cat came out of an alley, took a look at all the snow, and went back in. Farther on up the street a fat man, aproned and puffing, emerged from a restaurant and whiffed the cold air and gazed yearningly at the sky. As though even the dreams were up there, much too far away.”
― David Goodis, Of Tender Sin

“Night changed the streets.
It dressed them in the mourning clothes named darkness, and applied the makeup called mystery.”
― Hideyuki Kikuchi, A Wind Named Amnesia / Invader Summer

“No matter how quiet a street is, if the inside of your head is not quiet, you cannot truly experience the silence of the street!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“If your mind is wide, you won't drown even in narrow streets; if your mind is narrow, even wide roads will drown you!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“You found an empty street, and it was very quiet, and foggy, and it was dusk, the ground was made of stone and mossy, and the coming of night was very close, surrender yourself completely to this peace around you, and stop your mind, experience timelessness!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Campus

Shirt sleeves half out of the jeans,
Eyes grounding the green while looking
All around for Christmas nights.

Blue sounds of church bells ringing
On morning streets and alleys
Are rewritten in archways beneath.

The campus is clear of recitation,
And the steps lead to none other than doors
That keep opening to New Year’s hope.”
― Laura Chouette

“New Year

Grey softens our paths
While holding the stones
Beneath our feet near;

So the streets we wander
Become ours and become lost
While seeking new roads.

Horizons bloom over lines,
Held dear and near, yet not far
Enough from how we want to live.

— Outgrow, New Year’s Eves.”
― Laura Chouette

“A global conspiracy of—clogging the streets”
― Dipti Dhakul, Quote: +/-

“Has it ever happened that a street you don't want to enter turns into a street you don't want to exit after you enter? It has happened! Has it ever happened that a street you want to enter turns into a street you want to exit after you enter? It has happened! Why? Because you don't know what is good and what is bad for you!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“No matter which street you go to, if you find peace only on one street, it means you are not a wise person yet, because wisdom is to find peace in all streets, under all circumstances!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Only when you know the Streets & Parks at Night, the Whore-Houses, the Prisons, the Psychiatries & sometimes even more sinister Places — then you can truly claim to know a City.”
― Sino Melo

“City streets are a feast of faces; choose what to behold.”
― Aloo Denish Obiero

“When others uproot you from their greener pastures, as a weed, don't forget that you take the ones in the streets high and heal the real ones.”
― Goitsemang Mvula

“I heard this once:

When the immigrants came to America, they thought the streets would be paved with gold. But when they got here, they realized three things:

1. The streets were not paved with gold.
2. The streets were not paved at all.
3. They were the ones expected to do the paving.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue