“He liked the fact that Venice had no cars. It made the city human. The streets were like veins, he thought, and the people were the blood, circulating everywhere.”

Source: The Talented Mr. Ripley

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "He liked the fact that Venice had no cars. It made the city human. The streets were like veins, he thought, and the peo…" by Patricia Highsmith?
Patricia Highsmith photo
Patricia Highsmith 22
American novelist and short story writer 1921–1995

Related quotes

Markus Zusak photo
Lee Child photo

“The dynamics of the city. His mother had been scared of cities. It had been part of his education. She had told him cities are dangerous places. They're full of tough, scary guys. He was a tough boy himself but he had walked around as a teenager ready and willing to believe her. And he had seen that she was right. People on city streets were fearful and furtive and defensive. They kept their distance and crossed to the opposite sidewalk to avoid coming near him. They made it so obvious he became convinced the scary guys were always right behind him, at his shoulder. Then he suddenly realized no, I'm the scary guy. They're scared of me. It was a revelation. He saw himself reflected in store windows and understood how it could happen. He had stopped growing at fifteen when he was already six feet five and two hundred and twenty pounds. A giant. Like most teenagers in those days he was dressed like a bum. The caution his mother had drummed into him was showing up in his face as a blank-eyed, impassive stare. They're scared of me. It amused him and he smiled and then people stayed even farther away. From that point onward he knew cities were just the same as every other place, and for every city person he needed to be scared of there were nine hundred and ninety-nine others a lot more scared of him. He used the knowledge like a tactic, and the calm confidence it put in his walk and his gaze redoubled the effect he had on people. The dynamics of the city.”

Source: Running Blind (2000), Ch. 1.

Donald E. Westlake photo

“If Chester had a failing, it was that he believed people were what they thought they were.”

The Hunter (1962), using the pseudonym Richard Stark

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner photo

“They [his 'Street Scene' paintings and drawings, he made in Berlin] originated in the years 1911-14, in one of the loneliest times of my life, during which an agonizing restlessness drove me out onto the streets day and night, which were filled with people and cars.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

Quote from Kirchner's Notebook entry 'Meine Strasenbilder', 24 Augustus 1919; as quoted in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Meisterwerke der Druckgraphik, M. M. Moeller, Gerd Hatje, Stuttgart 1990 p. 184
1916 - 1919

“Wars were not made by young men, he thought, yet they had to fight them.”

Douglas Reeman (1924–2017) British author

A Tradition of Victory, Cap 14 "The Toast is Victory!"

John Connolly photo
William Saroyan photo
Virginia Woolf photo
Anthony Burgess photo
Conrad Aiken photo

“His thoughts were blown and scattered like leaves;
He thought of the pail... Why, then, was it forgotten?
Because he would not need it?”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Related topics