Quotes about sidewalk (54 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“I am too sick to lay down
the sidewalks frighten me
the whole damned city frightens me,
what I will become
what I have become
frightens me.”

Charles Bukowski book Mockingbird Wish Me Luck

Source: Mockingbird Wish Me Luck

“Life's wildest moment---she kneels on the sidewalk. Everything else she does is lies, lies.”

Henry Miller book Sexus

Source: Sexus

Life

“Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.”

Mark Twain book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Ch. 2

Life , Appearance

“I could take you down on this sidewalk and be up that skirt of yours in a heartbeat. And you wouldn't fight me, would you? No, she probably wouldn't.

Wrath and Beth”

Jessica Bird book Dark Lover

Source: Dark Lover

Fight

“Like God's own chocolate, I'd lick her shadow off a hot sidewalk”

Christopher Moore book Coyote Blue

Source: Coyote Blue

God

“I like the rain. It washes memories off the sidewalk of life.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Source: Manhattan

Life , Memory

“We hit the sidewalk, and dropped hands. How I wished, right then, that the whole world was a street.”

Aimee Bender (1969) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

World

“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

Life , Way

“People hide their truest nature. I understood that; I even applauded it. What sort of world would it be if people bled all over the sidewalks, if they wept under trees, smacked whomever they despised, kissed strangers, revealed themselves?”

Alice Hoffman book The Ice Queen

Source: The Ice Queen

People , World , Kiss , Nature

“There was a time when I liked a good riot. Put on some heavy old street clothes that could stand a bit of sidewalk-scraping, infect myself with something good and contagious, then go out and stamp on some cops. It was great, being nine years old.”

Warren Ellis (1968) English comics and fiction writer

Time , Clothes

“God, it was hot! Forget about frying an egg on the sidewalk; this kind of heat would fry an egg inside the chicken.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

God , Forgetting

“Last night I walked clear down to Times Square & just as I arrived I suddenly realized I was a ghost - it was my ghost walking on the sidewalk.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

Time , Night

“Alec dragged the heavy canvas bag out of the back of the van, dropping it on the sidewalk. "Ready to go." He announced. "Lets kick some demon butt!"
Jace looked at him a little oddly. "You alright?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“I've sucked way too much cement for this year. Bad juju rising off them city sidewalks. I need to babble with a brook or two, inhale starlight, make friends with some trees.”

Tom Robbins Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

Source: Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

Way , Tree

“I'm stranded in the jungle,
Taking all the heat they was giving.
The night is dark but the sidewalk's bright
And lined with the light of the living.
From a tenement window a transistor blasts,
Turn around the corner things got real quiet real fast.
She hit me with a Tenth Avenue freeze-out.
Tenth Avenue freeze-out.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out"
Song lyrics, Born to Run (1975)

Light , Night

“If I had a Luger, I thought, I could drill the bastards. I leaned on one elbow and pointed a finger at the window, seeing what kind of shot I would get. Perfect. There was just enough light in the street for a good silhouette. I knew it would happen quickly, I’d have no choice: just pull the trigger and go deaf from the terrible noise, a frenzy of screaming and scratching followed by a ghastly thump of a body knocked back and down to the sidewalk.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

1990s, The Rum Diary (1998)

Light , Perfection

“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.”

Lee Child book Running Blind

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

People , Education , Fear , Smile

“You could start at a path leading nowhere more fantastic than from your own front steps to the sidewalk, and from there you could go… well, anywhere at all.”

Stephen King book It

It (1986)

“On a detox loft through a Glendale Park over sidewalk chalk
Someone wrote in red, "start over."”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Cleanse Song
Cassadaga (2007)

“We forced our way onward slowly, and, as we reached the edge of the city, the sidewalks were lined on both sides of the streets with black and white alike all looking with curious, eager faces at the man who held their destiny in his hand; but there was no anger in anyone's face; the whole was like a gala day, and it looked as if the President was some expected guest who had come to receive great honors. Indeed, no man was ever accorded a greater ovation than was extended to him, be it from warm hearts or from simple ceremony.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), p. 296

Way , Heart , Anger

“I use cracks on the sidewalk to walk down the street. I'd always walk on the lines. I never take anything but a calculated risk, and do it because it gives me a sense of identity. Fear is a man's best friend.”

John Cale (1942) Welsh composer, singer-songwriter and record producer

Attributed without citation at John Cale - Quotes, xs4all.nl, 16 November 2012 http://werksman.home.xs4all.nl/cale/quotes/index.html,

Fear , Sense

“The Americans didn't even think about the outcome of the bombing, because the Sudanese were so far below contempt as to be not worth thinking about. Suppose I walk down the sidewalk in Cambridge and, without a second thought, step on an ant. That would mean that I regard the ant as beneath contempt, and that's morally worse than if I purposely killed that ant.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Interview by Michael Powell in the Washington Post, May 5, 2002 https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2002/05/05/an-eminence-with-no-shades-of-gray/7fbaf1b5-ce87-45e3-a84f-604c61bb378e/?utm_term=.e1d833548377
Quotes 2000s, 2002

Thinking

“Rachel Trachtenburg: I really like the food at that place (Sidewalk Cafe). They have salads and pastas and stuff like that. What's your favorite food?
Kimya Dawson: I like cherries.
Rachel: That's a fruit. I said food.
Kimya: Fruit's food.
Rachel: You don't sit down and eat it. You don't eat it at a restaurant, like, "Oh, I'd like a fruit, please." You say, "I'd like a pizza please, or the pasta." Do you like Indian food? Mexican food? Italian food?
Kimya: Japanese food.
Rachel: Okay.”

Rachel Trachtenburg (1993) American musician

Time Out New York Kids http://www.timeoutnykids.com/music/1/w1.mar03.music.opener.html

Food

“With a long slow stride, limping a little from his blistered feet, Bud walked down Broadway, past empty lots where tin cans glittered among grass and sumach bushes and ragweed, between ranks of billboards and Bull Durham signs, past shanties and abandoned squatters’ shacks, past gulches heaped with wheelscarred rubbishpiles where dumpcarts were dumping ashes and clinkers, past knobs of gray outcrop where steamdrills continually tapped and nibbled, past excavations out of which wagons full of rock and clay toiled up plank roads to the street, until he was walking on new sidewalks along a row of yellow brick apartment houses, looking in the windows of grocery stores, Chinese laundries, lunchrooms, flower and vegetable shops, tailors’, delicatessens. (pp. 23-24)”

John Dos Passos book Manhattan Transfer

Manhattan Transfer (1925)

Flowers , Grass , Past , Housing

““What do you know about the activities of the brain and the nervous system?”
I laughed. “About as much as any hustler from the Budayeen who can barely read and write his name. I know that the brain is in the head, I’ve heard that it’s a bad idea to let some thug spill it on the sidewalk. Beyond that, I don’t know much.” I did, truthfully, know some more, but I always hold something in reserve. It’s a good policy to be a little quicker, a little stronger, and a little smarter than everybody thinks you are.”

George Alec Effinger book When Gravity Fails

Source: When Gravity Fails (1986), Chapter 12 (p. 160).

Idea , Thinking , Reading

“Though the destinations differ, the roads leading there would look the same, if road infrastructures are standardized. Senator Chiz Escudero's Senate Bill 2886 seeks to regulate and standardize all road infrastructures, including street signs and sidewalks, from the poorest barangays to the richest enclaves. The bill will not only improve aesthetics in all areas, it will also promote road safety in a country known as having one of the worst road conditions in the world.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Escudero, F. [Francis]. (2015, August 16). Retrieved from Official Facebook Page of Francis Escudero https://www.facebook.com/senchizescudero/posts/10153505589600610/
2015, Facebook

World , Country

“Why has he closed the door on Canada Post? Here's a guy who says he was a terrific manager of the economy and all things economic yet he's shut down our postal service. It's certainly the wrong thing to do and it sends a very bad signal out to the working people that tromp up and down our sidewalks and deliver our mail … that he doesn't really respect the bargaining process.”

Jack Layton (1950–2011) Leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada

Layton nixes cutting NDP ties to labour unions http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20110618/ndp-layton-labour-movement-110618/ June 18,2011

People , Guy

“I was passing the doorman of the Biltmore, and I hated him at once, with his yellow braids and six feet of height and all that dignity, and now a black automobile drove to the curb, and a man got out. He looked rich; and then a woman got out, and she was beautiful, her fur was silver fox, and she was a song across the sidewalk and inside the swinging doors, and I thought oh boy for a little of that, just a day and a night of that, and she was a dream as I walked along, her perfume still in the set morning air.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Hate , Beauty , Dreams , Boy

“Hands in his pockets he began to walk aimlessly down the sidewalk runnel. And, each minute, feeling more and more scared and desperate. Everything was falling apart around him. And he seemed helpless to halt the collapse; he could only witness it, completely impotent, snatched up and gripped by processes too powerful for him to understand.”

Philip K. Dick book Clans of the Alphane Moon

Source: Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964), Chapter 9 (p. 139)

Feeling , Understanding

“I never learned to throw a baseball with confidence, but I knew how to aim a newspaper well enough. I could make my mark from the sidewalk—one hand on the handlebar—with deadeye nonchalance. The paper flew over my shoulder; it twirled over hedges and open sprinklers to land with a fine plop only inches from the door. In the growling gray light (San Francisco still has foghorns), I collect the San Francisco Chronicle from the wet steps. I am so lonely I must subscribe to three papers”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013)

Confidence , Light , Learning

“Senate Bill 2886 seeks to standardize sheds, street signs and lights, and markers nationwide. Roads, sidewalk pavements, signs and speed bumps should not vary depending on where you live. It should be uniform and standardized.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Francis Escudero Twitter feed: @SayChiz (8:38 p.m. 2015 August 15).
2015, Twitter Feed

Light , Dependency , Speed

“I was walking in the city the other day. I saw a syringe lying on the sidewalk. I stuck the needle in my forearm. That was a classy neighborhood, so the use of the syringe seemed justified.”

Xavier Leroy (1968) French computer scientistand programmer

Sources
Source: Xavier Leroy (2005-07-23), Post to the Caml mailing list, 2008-02-20 http://caml.inria.fr/pub/ml-archives/caml-list/2005/07/0d3297c63e4b92fd956ea53d7b9ff255.en.html,

Lying

“I often think people are nervous, jittery in this media climate of what if, what if, maybe, perhaps, could be — when there is usually no sensible reason to feel nervous.
Like a bearded nut in robes on the sidewalk proclaiming the end of the world is near, the media is just doing what makes it feel good, not reporting hard facts. We need to start seeing the media as a bearded nut on the sidewalk, shouting out false fears. Its not sensible to listen to it.”

Michael Crichton book State of Fear

State of Fear (2004)

People , World , Fear , Feeling

“The screech and mechanical uproar of the big city turns the citified head, fills citified ears — as the song of birds, wind in the trees, animal cries, or as the voices and songs of his loved ones once filled his heart. He is sidewalk-happy.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

“Earth”
The Living City (1958)

Love , Bird , Tree , Heart

“On the way home from school, I’d go two blocks out of my way to pass by Lopez’ Pool Hall to look for cigarette butts that the veteranos had flicked to the sidewalk. They had G. I. hair cuts, their old, spit-shined paratrooper boots and the same khaki uniforms they wore to fight the Japs. I’d pretend not to notice them leaning against the building. With my head down, I’d walk along the gutter and just casually push the longer butts with my toe as if I were kicking a can or a rock … just a barefoot boy with cheek humhumming along the road on a hot summer day in his Huckleberry Finn strides, oh yes!”

Oscar Zeta Acosta book Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

Source: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), p. 91.

School , Way , Home , Boy

“It was because of the general inclination, until very recently, to believe that art exists in art. At every opportunity, I've tried to correct that idea, suggesting that art is only a part – one of the elements that we live with... Being a painter, I probably take a painting more seriously than someone who drives a truck or something. Being a painter, I probably also take his truck more seriously. In the sense of looking at it and listening to it and comparing it to other trucks and having a sense of its relationship to the road and the sidewalk and the things around it and the driver himself. Observation and measure are my business.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

1960's, I never thought of it as much of an ability,' (1968)

Art , Idea , Business , Sense

“In Paris, one is always reminded of being a foreigner. If you park your car wrong, it is not the fact that it's on the sidewalk that matters, but the fact that you speak with an accent.”

Roman Polanski (1933) Polish-French film director, producer, writer, actor, and rapist

Polanski : His Life and Films (1982)

Cars

“I’m going to go ahead and go boldly
Cuz a little bird told me
That jumping is easy
That falling is fun
Right up ‘til you hit the sidewalk
Shivering and stunned.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Swan Dive
Song lyrics

Bird

“While my companion is busily engaged in getting copy for a special article about the Market, I step nimbly out of the way of a swarthy gentleman from Calabria, who with his two-wheeled barrow is the last link in the immense chain of transportation connecting the farmer in the distant tropics and the cockney pedestrian who halts on the sidewalk and purchases a banana for a couple of pennies.”

William McFee (1881–1966) American writer

The Market

Way , Distant

“Obsolescence and death, the reign of the archaic, the abandoned, and the corny: Really, if you saw Windows 3.0 on the sidewalk outside the building, would you bend over and pick it up?!?”

Bruce Sterling (1954) American writer, speaker, futurist, and design instructor

in the Long Now talk "The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole" (2004).

Death

“The sidewalk was in trouble and the bears were in trouble and I broke it up.”

Dutch Schultz (1902–1935) American mobster

From police transcripts of incoherent deathbed confession

“A bell was supposed to ring when the bull's eye was hit. Not a sound. I emptied the gun, sniffed the tart stench of powder, and made a face. Tim and Camilla laughed at the sissy. By now a crowd had gathered on the sidewalk. They all shared Camilla's disgust, for it was a contagious thing, and I felt it too.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn't do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life's assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i. e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's terror of the flames. Yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don‘t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You'd have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Infinite Jest (1996)

Life , Death , People , Fear

“"4 example the other day i saw a black person walking down the street and i was like "omg a negro" but instead of walking on the other side i said "what would rumsfeld do?" so i stayed on the sidewalk. when he came up to me i wanted to show him that i have no problems with people of color so i said "hey" and offered him my spare change before he could even ask."”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

i love donald rumsfeld http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=af_racist
The Best Page in the Universe, April Fools

People , Color , Problem , Change

“And you stood there in front of me just
Close enough to touch,
Close enough to hope you couldn't see
What I was thinking of.Drop everything now,
Meet me in the pouring rain.
Kiss me on the sidewalk,
Take away the pain.
'Cause I see sparks fly whenever you smile.”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

Sparks Fly.
Song lyrics, Speak Now (2010)

Pain , Smile , Hope , Kiss

“…my people are facing difficulties. They are being killed in the streets. They are on the sidewalks for almost nine months now. As you know, they own more than 70 million machine guns. That’s their personal weapons…Personally, I’m not protected, because my people are not protected. And therefore, the international community have to provide protection, and the United States of America, as well. They have to take a clear stance with the Yemeni people.”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2010s, Democracy Now! interview (2011)

People , Communication , Personality

“It began to rain harder. The last snow was under attack by these heavy, wide-spaced drops. All that remained underfoot of months of frost and freezing was a light crust that crumbled as he walked. The sidewalk was soon completely washed by this slow, tenacious rain. Its smooth, shining surface reflected the midnight lights and tangles of naked branches.”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P. 210

Light

“Convince yourself. Kovno is a treasure-trove for artists. It is gloomy, the lamps don't make it lighter and the streets are getting darker. Their violet windows hover threateningly in the darkness. The elusive lines of low houses, on them - the glimmer of green and red flames - illuminating rows of shops. Bright green bright red stripes [all] fall on the violet sidewalk. And all those shadows are full of people who only speak about one thing, about love, in the dialect, Polish or broken Russian. Whispers and loud words touch the silence, like the green and red bands of light - the darkness of the night. Something terrible, terrible lies over everything, I feel a shudder, it seems I am in another world, far away from real life.”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

Quote from Werefkin's letter to Alexej von Jawlensky, between December 1909 and Spring 1910; as cited in 'Ambiguity of Home: Identity and Reminiscence in Marianne Werefkin's Return Home, c. 1909', Adrienne Kochman http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring06/52-spring06/spring06article/171-ambiguity-of-home-identity-and-reminiscence-in-marianne-werefkins-return-home-c-1909
1906 - 1911

Love , Life , People , World

“Wickham is not an upwardly mobile community. It's dingy and gray as only a mill town can be. The streets are the color of a shoe bottom, and the only way to tell the difference between the bars and the homes is to look for the neon signs in the windows. The roads and sidewalks are uneven, the tar cracked and pale. Many of the people, especially the workers as they trudge home from the mills in the dying light, have the look of those who've long ago gotten used to the fact that no one remembers them. It's a place where the people are grateful for the seasons, because at least they confirm that time is actually moving on.”

Dennis Lehane book A Drink Before the War

Source: A Drink Before the War (1994), Ch. 8.

People , Color , Shoe , Way

“"Harold and I tried to plant new trees, but they won't take because of the roots. You got to dig up the old stumps and they go way down. It cost a lot and the roots go everywhere. Under the streets and the lawns. We got them in our cellar. And you seen the sidewalks." I said I had. "You'd like to plant a tree or two, but where?" "The roots will die eventually," I said, trying to be optimistic, since she really wanted to plant trees. "That's what I said. Harold says no. He says they just petrify there in the ground, making it impossible for anything alive to find root and grab ahold. 'Course Harold is a sourpuss. I think sometimes he just says things like that so he won't have to go out and try. Some people would rather do without trees than dig a little hole."”

Richard Russo book The Risk Pool

Source: The Risk Pool (1986), Chapter 42.

People , Way , Thinking , Tree

“He made all Manhattan shake
and every street and sidewalk quake”

Mike Scott (1958) songwriter, musician

"The Return of Jimi Hendrix"
Dream Harder (1993)
Context: He made all Manhattan shake
and every street and sidewalk quake
his stratocaster caused the mighty Empire State
to vibrate

“Worshiping the earth is more fun than going to church. It's also closer. We can just step off the sidewalk. And sometimes we can get impressionable members of the opposite sex to perform sacramental rites with us. "Every drop of water wasted is a drop less of a wild and scenic river, Jennifer. We'd better double up in the shower."”

P. J. O'Rourke (1947) American journalist

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

Sex , Water

“This Delta, he thought: This Delta. This land which man has deswamped and denuded and derivered in two generations so that white men can own plantations and commute every night to Memphis and black men own plantations and ride in jim crow cars to Chicago to live in millionaires’ mansions on Lakeshore Drive, where white men rent farms and live like niggers and niggers crop on shares and live like animals, where cotton is planted and grows man-tall in the very cracks of the sidewalks, and usury and mortgage and bankruptcy and measureless wealth, Chinese and African and Aryan and Jew, all breed and spawn together until no man has time to say which is which nor cares…. No wonder the ruined woods I used to know don’t cry for retribution! he thought: The people who have destroyed it will accomplish its revenge.”

William Faulkner book Go Down, Moses

Delta Autumn (p. 347)
Go Down, Moses (1942)

Time , Night , Wealth , People

“I was never threatened…I never knew anyone who was lynched. But there was subtle racism every day of my life. You could not speak to a white man unless he spoke to you first. On the sidewalk, I’d have to move so a white person could walk by.”

Ernest J. Gaines (1933–2019) Novelist, short story writer, teacher

On his experiences with segregation (as quoted in “Ernest J. Gaines: A Great American Author Pays It Forward to a New Generation of Black Writers” https://www.theroot.com/ernest-j-gaines-a-great-american-author-pays-it-forwa-1790858566 in The Root; 2015 Jan 22)

Personality , Life