Quotes about boulevard (34 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander on the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while dry leaves are blowing.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Reading , Housing

“morning when I left. I checked my car for a GPS tag and yet somehow Creighton’s following me up Laurel Canyon Boulevard.” “Maybe it”

Michael Connelly book The Wrong Side of Goodbye

Source: The Wrong Side of Goodbye

Cars

“Recipe For Happiness Khaborovsk Or Anyplace'

One grand boulevard with trees
with one grand cafe in sun
with strong black coffee in very small cups.

One not necessarily very beautiful
man or woman who loves you.

One fine day.”

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919) American artist, writer and activist

Love , Beauty , Coffee , Tree

“I’m not here to argue or discuss anything that we differ about, because it’s time for us to submerge our differences and realize that it is best for us to first see that we have the same problem, a common problem, a problem that will make you catch hell whether you’re a Baptist, or a Methodist, or a Muslim, or a nationalist. Whether you’re educated or illiterate, whether you live on the boulevard or in the alley, you’re going to catch hell just like I am. We’re all in the same boat and we all are going to catch the same hell from the same man. He just happens to be a white man. All of us have suffered here, in this country, political oppression at the hands of the white man, economic exploitation at the hands of the white man, and social degradation at the hands of the white man.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

The Ballot or the Bullet (1964), Speech in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964)

Education , Hell , Problem , Suffering

“I thought I should make something – I felt it would be so easy – it would take form under my hands like magic.
Then people would see!
A strong naked arm – a tanned powerful neck a young woman rests her head on the arching chest.
She closes her eyes and listens with open and quivering lips to the words he whispers into her long flowing hair.
I should paint that image just as I saw it – but in the blue haze.
Those two at that moment, no longer merely themselves, but simply a link in the chain binding generation to generation.
People should understand the significance, the power of it. They should remove their hats like they do in church.
There should be no more pictures of interiors, of people reading and women knitting.
There would be pictures of real people who breathed, suffered, felt, loved.
I felt impelled – it would be easy. The flesh would have volume – the colours would be alive.
There was an interval. The music stopped. I was a little sad. I remembered how many times I had had similar thoughts – and that once I had finished the painting – they had simply shaken their heads and smiled.
Once again I found myself out on the Boulevard des Italiens.”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

written in Saint Cloud, 1889
Quotes from his text: 'Saint Cloud Manifesto', Munch (1889): as quoted in Edvard Much – behind the scream, Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, pp. 120 -121
1880 - 1895

Love , Women , People , Sadness

“When I got home I mixed a stiff one and stood by the open window in the living room and sipped it and listened to the groundswell of traffic on Laurel Canyon Boulevard and looked at the glare of the big angry city hanging over the shoulder of the hills through which the boulevard had been cut. Far off the banshee wail of police or fire sirens rose and fell, never for very long completely silent. Twenty four hours a day somebody is running, somebody else is trying to catch him. Out there in the night of a thousand crimes, people were dying, being maimed, cut by flying glass, crushed against steering wheels or under heavy tires. People were being beaten, robbed, strangled, raped, and murdered. People were hungry, sick; bored, desperate with loneliness or remorse or fear, angry, cruel, feverish, shaken by sobs. A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness. It all depends on where you sit and what your own private score is. I didn't have one. I didn't care. I finished the drink and went to bed.”

Raymond Chandler book The Long Goodbye

The Long Goodbye (1954)

People , Fear , Home , Drink

“You can only cruse the boulevards of regret so far, and then you've got to get back up onto the freeway again.”

Thomas Pynchon book Inherent Vice

Source: Inherent Vice

“I was brought up in a very logical place," said Linz, who had his bar mitzvah at Wilshire Boulevard Temple. "But I think they would”

Alex D. Linz (1989) American actor, filmmaker

happen
His attitude to miracles.
Article in Jewishjournal.com November 20, 2003

Thinking

“Everyone goes to the 'Grands-Boulevards' and let himself loose... Do not picture these in costume, they are not for the most part.... perhaps a clown with a big nose, or two girls with bare necks and short skirts.... the parade of the queens of the halls [Paris’ markets] is also one of the events.... Some are pretty but look awkward in their silk dresses and crowns, particularly as the broad sun displays their defects – perhaps a neck too thin or a painted face which shows ghastly white in the sunlight.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

In a letter to his mother, Paris, May 11, 1907; as quoted in Edward Hopper, Gail Levin, Bonfini Press, Switzerland 1984, p. 27
1905 - 1910

Girl , Sun , Parting , Painting

“You were founding members of the mighty SMU Mob, bouncing like mad and watching in wonder as your then-Student Body President, Señor Lobster, danced with joy after all those Pony victories right here in Moody. And you'll think back to those carefree fall game days on the Boulevard – though I don’t recall seeing too many of you in the football stadium.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2010s, 2015, Remarks at the SMU 100th Spring Commencement (May 2015)

Game , Thinking , Victory , Joy

“If I could really paint! A month ago I was so sure of what I wanted. Inside me I saw it out there, walked around with it like a queen, and was blissful. Now the veils have fallen again, gray veils, hiding the whole idea of me. I stand like a beggar at the door, shivering in the cold, pleading to be let in. It is hard to move patiently, step by step, when one is young and demanding... I walk along the boulevards [Paris] and crowds of people pass by and something inside me cries out, 'I still have such beautiful things before me. None of you, not one, has such things.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

And then it cries, 'When will it come? Soon?'
excerpt of her Journal, Paris 1897; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 195
1897

People , Beauty , Idea , Painting

“Carlo looked as at the world of fallen man on the endless suburbs that passed for a city, an eatery in the likeness of a Sphinx (enter between its forepaws), another, for jumbo malts so thick you can't suck 'em through a straw, in the form of an elephant crouched as at the bidding of its mahout, gimcrack temples of various faiths, attap roofs of nutburger stands with Corinthian columns, loans loans loans, stores crammed with cutprice radios, a doughnuttery, homes like Swiss chalets, like Bavarian castles, miniature Blenheims, Strawberry Hills, Taj Mahals, a bank in the form of a tiny ocean liner, dusty trees on the boulevards (datepalm, orange, oleander), bars with neon bottles endlessly pouring, colleges for stuntmen, beauticians, morticians, degrees in drummajoretteship.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Earthly Powers (1980)

World , Faith , Home , Tree

“What surprising fellows those French painters are. A Millet, Delacroix, Corot, Troyon, Daubigny, Rousseau, and a Daumier.... Something else about Delacroix - he had a discussion with a friend about the question of working absolutely from nature, and said on that occasion that one should take one's 'studies' from nature - but that the 'actual painting' had to be made 'by heart'. This friend was walking along the boulevard when they had this discussion - which was already fairly heated. When they parted the other man was still not entirely persuaded. After they parted, Delacroix let him stroll on for a bit - then (making a trumpet of his two hands) bellowed after him in the middle of the street - to the consternation of the worthy passers-by:
'By heart! By heart!”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

(Par coeur! Par coeur!)
I can't tell you how much I enjoyed reading this article and some other things about Delacroix..
In his letter to Anthon van Rappard, from Nuenen, The Netherlands, 8 and c. 15 August 1885 - original manuscript, letter 526, at Van Gogh Museum, location Amsterdam - inv. nos. b8390 V/2006, http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let526/letter.html
See for this anecdote, taken from Charles Blanc, Les artistes de mon temps, letter 496, n. 7.
1880s, 1885

Question , Nature , Study , Reading

“All the vampires walkin' through the valley
Move west down Ventura Boulevard.
And all the bad boys are standing in the shadows
All the good girls are home with broken hearts.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Free Fallin, written with Jeff Lynne
Lyrics, Full Moon Fever (1989)

Home , Girl , Boy , Heart

“Centuries ago, when I first stood on that little boulevard stage in Paris — when I saw the happy faces, when I heard applause — I felt as if my body and soul had found their destiny; I felt as if every promise in my birth and childhood had begun its fulfillment at last.
Oh, there were other actors, worse and better; other singers; other clowns; there have been a million since and a million will come after this moment. But each of us shines with his own inimitable power; each of us comes alive in his own unique and dazzling moment; each of us has his chance to vanquish the others forever in the eye of the beholder, and that is the only kind of accomplishment I can really understand: the kind of accomplishment in which the self-this self, if you will — is utterly whole and triumphant.”

Anne Rice The Vampire Chronicles

Lestat
Tale of the Body Thief (1992)

Soul , Birth , Understanding , Chance

“.. ambition to surpass Impressionism, destroying the subject's unity of time and place.... [to render its relations to] things that apparently had nothing to do with it, but that in reality were linked to it in my imagination, in my memories or by feeling. In the same canvas I brought together the Arc of Triumph, the Tour Eiffel, the Alps, the head of my father, an autobus, the municipal hall of Pienza, the boulevard…”

Gino Severini (1883–1966) Italian painter

Quote from his article 'Processo e difesa di un pittore d'oggi', L'Arte 5, Rome, September – November, 1931; as cited in Inventing Futurism: The Art and Politics of Artificial Optimism, by Christine Poggi, Princeton University Press, 2009, p. 25
quote, referring to his painting 'Memories of a Voyage', Severini painted in 1910-1911.

Feeling , Imagination , Reality , Memory

“The truth was that he died from solitude, the enemy known but to few on this Earth, and whom only the simplest of us are fit to withstand. The brilliant Costaguanaro of the boulevards had died from solitude and want of faith in himself and others.”

Joseph Conrad book Nostromo

Part Third: The Lighthouse, Ch. 10
Nostromo (1904)

Truth , Faith , Solitude

“I drove a bus down Sunset Boulevard once, and I didn’t kill anyone.”

Sanjaya Malakar (1989) American reality television personality

Asked, at age 17, about his driving skills. http://web.archive.org/web/20070621231816/http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-malakar_pjun07,1,5161622.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

“[Issam al-]Sartawi and I are sitting in a small restaurant on the Boulevard St. Germain. After the main course, he excuses himself. 'I have to go to the bathroom. Keep an eye on my briefcase.' His attaché case - the kind Israelis call James Bond cases - stands under the table. After a few minutes he comes back, takes his seat and bursts out laughing. 'If I told anyone of my friends that I left a briefcase full of PLO secrets in the care of a Zionist, they wouldn't believe me', he says. 'If I tell anyone of my friends that a PLO terrorist put an attaché case under my table and went away, and I remained there, they'd think that I was crazy', I reply. We laugh and order a dessert.”

Uri Avnery (1923–2018) Israeli writer

My Friend, the Enemy (1986) - page 128

Secret , Thinking

“The trope was eminently Oakeshottian. Politics was not a battle of interests, or a quest for truth, or a voyage of progress – it was an aesthetic performance, to captivate an audience. But it was not high theatre (Oakeshott had also insisted that politics was a second-rate activity). It was more like commercial theatre, the drama of the boulevards that plays to our emotions or embarrassments – Rattigan rather than Racine, he explained. On this stage, Mount has certainly given us a stylish production. We might call it the comedy of reform.”

Perry Anderson (1938) British historian

Source: Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005), Ch. 2. "Constitutional Theatre, Ferdinand Mount" (1992), p. 48

Truth

“[Severini referred to himself as a].. primitive who is thrilled by the movement of a dancer and boulevard filled with people.”

Gino Severini (1883–1966) Italian painter

(c. 1911), as quoted by Fonti, 'The Dance', p. 15; as cited in: Shannon N. Pritchard, Gino Severini and the symbolist aesthetics of his futurist dance imagery, 1910-1915 https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/pritchard_shannon_n_200305_ma.pdf Diss. uga, 2003, p. 33

People

“Cher had just been to see Sunset Boulevard. She hunted me down the next day through management to ask me out to dinner. I wouldn't break my first date with Scott which felt like the chance of a lifetime, so after a pause she said, "Fine, bring him." I drove my car, Scott rode his bike. Scott parked his bike down the street. And we all met up, and we had dinner with Cher, and we had a fab time. At the end of the evening she said to me: "Walk me to my car, you'll love it." As we're walking to the car arm in arm, the photographers just come out of… the bushes, you name it. And we walk to the car and she leanes over and she goes "When I get in the car, give me a kiss." And I'm like "Fine." – What gay man wouldn't want to give Cher a kiss? So we kiss and they catch it just at that moment. The next day in the tabloids I was her new toyboy. But little did they know that the boy with the bicycle who walked out after us went and unhooked his bike, I put her in the car, went off, got my Jag, opened the trunk, put his bike in the trunk and I took him home. That would've been the story! —And he stayed. For 18 years now.”

John Barrowman (1967) Scottish-American actor, singer, dancer, musical theatre performer, writer and television personality

Fern Britton Meets John Barrowman BBC 2012

Love , Cars , Home , Boy

“I started chanting when I was living on Hollywood Boulevard, working as a stripper. Within six months, I got my first million dollars and I didn’t have to strip for bucks any more. Then I met Kurt and we still chanted, but we did a lot of drugs together.”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

On her Nichiren Buddhist chanting practice, The Guardian (29 December 2010)
2006–2013

“All the efforts of several hundred thousand people, crowded in a small space, to disfigure the land on which they lived; all the stone they covered it with to keep it barren; how so diligently every sprouting blade of grass was removed; all the smoke of coal and naphtha; all the cutting down of trees and driving off of cattle could not shut out the spring, even from the city. The sun was shedding its light; the grass, revivified, was blooming forth, where it was left uncut, not only on the greenswards of the boulevard, but between the flag-stones, and the birches, poplars and wild-berry trees were unfolding their viscous leaves; the limes were unfolding their buds; the daws, sparrows and pigeons were joyfully making their customary nests, and the flies were buzzing on the sun-warmed walls. Plants, birds, insects and children were equally joyful. Only men—grown-up men—continued cheating and tormenting themselves and each other. People saw nothing holy in this spring morning, in this beauty of God's world—a gift to all living creatures—inclining to peace, good-will and love, but worshiped their own inventions for imposing their will on each other.”

Leo Tolstoy book Resurrection

Source: Resurrection (1899), Ch. 1

Love , Men , God , Children

“Last Friday night,
Yeah we danced on tabletops.
And we took too many shots,
Think we kissed but I forgot.Last Friday night,
Yeah we maxed our credit cards.
And got kicked out of the bar,
So we hit the boulevard.”

Katy Perry (1984) American singer, songwriter and actress

Last Friday Night, written by Katy Perry, Lukasz Gottwald, Max Martin, and Bonnie McKee
Song lyrics, Teenage Dream (2010)

Kiss , Thinking , Dance , Night

“By the way, there's a place on Hollywood Boulevard where you can get a _____ for twenty bucks.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

citation needed
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2005–2014), "By the way…" variations

Way

“I was walking along the Boulevard des Italiens [in February 1912, during a group exhibition of Futurist painters in Paris] when, as I passed in front of a newspaper stand, I had the pleasant surprise of seeing on the front page of the Journal the reproduction of my picture 'The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli.”

Carlo Carrà (1881–1966) Italian painter

Source: 1940's, La mia Vita (1945), Carlo Carrà; as quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger (2008), p. 29 - In his quote Carrà is refering to his painting 'The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli', he painted ca 1910/11

“The city might be savage, stray dogs might share the streets with grimy urchins whose blank eyes reflected the knowledge that they might soon be covered over, blinded forever, by the same two pennies just begged from some gentleman, and no one in the fuming, fulminous boulevards of trade might know who actually ran Ambergris—or, if anyone ran it at all, but, like a renegade clock, it ran on and wound itself heedless, empowered by the insane weight of its own inertia, the weight of its own citizenry.”

Jeff VanderMeer book City of Saints and Madmen

"Dradin, In Love", Ch. 4, p. 48
City of Saints and Madmen (2001–2004)

Dogs , Knowledge

“There is and will be rousing language to keep citizens armed and arming; slaughtered and slaughtering in the malls, courthouses, post offices, playgrounds, bedrooms and boulevards; stirring, memorializing language to mask the pity and waste of needless death. There will be more diplomatic language to countenance rape, torture, assassination.”

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer

Nobel Prize Lecture (1993)
Context: There is and will be rousing language to keep citizens armed and arming; slaughtered and slaughtering in the malls, courthouses, post offices, playgrounds, bedrooms and boulevards; stirring, memorializing language to mask the pity and waste of needless death. There will be more diplomatic language to countenance rape, torture, assassination. There is and will be more seductive, mutant language designed to throttle women, to pack their throats like paté-producing geese with their own unsayable, transgressive words; there will be more of the language of surveillance disguised as research; of politics and history calculated to render the suffering of millions mute; language glamorized to thrill the dissatisfied and bereft into assaulting their neighbors; arrogant pseudo-empirical language crafted to lock creative people into cages of inferiority and hopelessness.

Death , Memory

“We shall never end wars, Mrs. Barham, by blaming it on the ministers and generals, or warmongering imperialists, or all the other banal bogeys. It's the rest of us who build statues to those generals and name boulevards after those ministers.”

Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981) American playwright, screenwriter and novelist

Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison.
The Americanization of Emily (1964)
Context: We shall never end wars, Mrs. Barham, by blaming it on the ministers and generals, or warmongering imperialists, or all the other banal bogeys. It's the rest of us who build statues to those generals and name boulevards after those ministers. The rest of us who make heroes of our dead and shrines of our battlefields. We wear our widow's weeds like nuns, Mrs. Barham, and perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifices.

War