Suburban Life Quotes

“Okay then, the blood has dried into the shirt so as I cut it away, it may sting some as I pull it away. Can you be brave for me?”
― R. Gerry Fabian, Just Out Of Reach

“Maurice was scandalized, horrified. He was shocked to the bottom of his suburban soul....”
― E.M. Forster, Maurice

“The parking lot was packed with cars. Most had come with families. The number of minivans really stood out. All minivans look identical to me. Like cans of tasteless biscuits.”
― Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore

“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.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“What the hell, I don't know, but to me a home in the suburbs is a sort of isolated hell where nothing happens.

[letter to sister Caroline Kerouac Blake, March 14, 1945]”
― Jack Kerouac, Jack Kerouac Selected Letters 1940-1956

“Rhythms. You can almost feel them on suburban streets, divine the hour of the day without consulting a clock from the sounds heard in the cool, leafy neighborhoods.”
― Nancy Rubin Stuart, The New Suburban Woman

“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.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“She stopped. She wanted to say something like 'Don't let it upset you,' which was a a terrible thing to say, which was just the sort of thing a privileged, frivolous, white Western woman would say, a woman who took far too much genuine pleasure in a new pair of shoes or a bottle of perfume.”
― Lianne Moriarty

“She stopped. She wanted to say something like, 'Don't let it upset you,' which was a a terrible thing to say, which was just the sort of thing a privileged, frivolous, white Western woman would say, a woman who took far too much genuine pleasure in a new pair of shoes or a bottle of perfume.”
― Lianne Moriarty, Big Little Lies

“In a country where less than 1% of the population farms, increasing food production in suburban landscapes would increase national food security.”
― Amy Stross, The Suburban Micro-Farm: Modern Solutions for Busy People

“...what I have found... is that I’m more alive and engaged with the edible landscape. For example, when the strawberries, cherries, or black raspberries ripen, it is an exciting moment! Nothing about a lawn is that exciting.”
― Amy Stross, The Suburban Micro-Farm: Modern Solutions for Busy People

“The great suburban mansions and modest tract homes are often silent all day, mausoleums to a dream, the streets hushed until the schoolchildren return home.”
― Nancy Rubin Stuart, The New Suburban Woman

“Yet the tranquil image of suburbias of the past remains, and continues to influence us, as do traditional concepts of femininity....”
― Nancy Rubin Stuart, The New Suburban Woman

“As cities were melting pots in the nineteenth century, suburbs have become the twentieth-century equivalent...minorities, refugees and other population subgroups have ...entered the suburbs.”
― Nancy Rubin Stuart, The New Suburban Woman

“Yet our old expectation that the suburbs are homey, tranquil and predictable places continues to gnaw at the feminine collective subconscious. The suburban home still begs for a presiding divinity -- a keeper of the keys and human cares, the archetypal mother of earlier ages.”
― Nancy Rubin Stuart, The New Suburban Woman

“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.”
― Donna Maltz, Living Like The Future Matters: The Evolution of a Soil to Soul Entrepreneur

“The orchard smelled thick: Scents of mud, buds, insects, and early-blooming flowers overlapped one another. Murphy had spent all her life breathing the aroma of fry grease and parking lot weeds. Squirrels darted up and down the trees, and rabbits and the occasional groundhog watched Murphy work, reminding her that the orchard was the world to them, that they’d never seen Taco Bell and would never be roadkill. It was actually comforting. It was still earth, but without the crap.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, Peaches

“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.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Hey! Pal! How do I get to town from
here?
And he ssid: Well, just take a right
where they're gonna build that new
shopping mall,
go straight past where they're gonna
put in the freeway,
take a left at what's gonna be the new
sports center,
and keep going until you hit the place
where they´re thiinking of
building that drive-in bank. You can't
miss it.
And I said: This must be the place.”
― Laurie Anderson , United States Reprint edition by Anderson, Laurie (1984) Paperback

“Hey! Pal! How do I get to town from
here?
And he said: Well, just take a right
where they're gonna build that new
shopping mall,
go straight past where they're gonna
put in the freeway,
take a left at what's gonna be the new
sports center,
and keep going until you hit the place
where they´re thinking of
building that drive-in bank. You can't
miss it.
And I said: This must be the place.”
― Laurie Anderson , United States Reprint edition by Anderson, Laurie (1984) Paperback

“The place where a genius is likely to be born is a suburban area.”
― Lana M. Rochel, Looking For Your Tribe: Poems

“You see, I'm not like Paul [Simonon] or the others, I had a chance to be a 'good, normal person' with a nice car and a house in the suburbs – the golden apple or whatever you call it. But I saw through it. I saw it was an empty life.
I only saw my father once a year (after being sent to boarding school). He was a real disciplinarian who was always giving me speeches about how he had pulled himself up by the sweat of his brow: a real guts and determination man. What he was really saying to me was, 'If you play by the rules, you can end up like me'. And I saw right away I didn't want to end up like him. Once I got out on my own, I realized I was right. I saw how the rules worked and I didn't like them.
[-- LA Times interview]”
― Joe Strummer