Pavement Quotes
New York is the biggest mouth in the world. It appears to be prime example of the herd instinct, leading the universal urban conspiracy to beguile man from his birthright (the good ground), to hang him by his eyebrows from skyhooks above hard pavement, to crucify him, sell him, or be sold by him.
Frank Lloyd Wright
As the skipping rope hit the pavement, so did the ball. As the rope curved over the head of the jumping child, the child with the ball caught the ball. Down came the ropes. Down came the balls. Over and over again. Up. Down. All in rhythm. All identical. Like the houses. Like the paths. Like the flowers.
Madeleine L'Engle
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich-yes, richer than a king-
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
Edwin Arlington Robinson
I have a temper. My mum's got a temper. My brother's got a temper. You've got to have one. You know what happens if you don't have one? One day you're walking down the street and you just pop. You're lying there dead on the pavement because you've been holding and suppressing all this bullshit, you know.
Russell Crowe
The object of a ceremony is not to be beautiful, though that is a valuable element. The object of a ceremony is to be ceremonious. Ritual is a need of the human soul - nay, it is rather a need of the human body, like exercise. A man does not take off his hat to a lady because he looks nicer without it; the instance of bald men would be alone sufficient to upset such an explanation. He does it because you must positively do something when you meet a lady, or your whole civilisation goes to pieces; and taking off your hat is easier than taking off your necktie or lying face downwards on the pavement.
G. K. Chesterton
Defeated, I followed my impulse casually. I followed a woman who had been watching me from her corner. Then we walked side by side. We said a few words; she took me home with her. Then I went through the banal scene. It passed like a sudden hurtling–down. Again, I am on the pavement and I am not at peace as I had hoped. An immense confusion bewilders me. It is as if I could not see things as they were. I see too deep and too much.
Henri Barbusse
My mother took me to town with her, and made me pass, as if by accident, through the yard of a slaughter-house. I saw some men, their arms naked and besmeared with blood, knocking a bull in the head; others cutting the throats of calves and sheep, and separating their still heaving limbs. Streams of smoking gore ran along the pavement. An intense feeling of pity, mingled with horror, seized upon me. I asked to be led away quickly. The thought of these scenes, the necessary preliminaries of one of those dishes of meat which I had so often seen on the table, made me take a disgust to animal food and inspired me with a horror for butchers.
Alphonse de Lamartine
The bicycle is a city thing, virtually useless anywhere excepting on a pavement or hard surface of some kind. Without the road it would never have been invented. It is a little mad, both in design and purpose. Two wheels held together in a frame, with a simple mechanical system enabling a forward movement for one person.
William Saroyan
Outside, the main doors behind him, he was hit full in the chest by autumn. The doggy wind leapt about him and nipped; leaves skirred along the pavement, the scrape of the ferrules of sticks; melancholy, that tetrasyllable, sat on a plinth in the middle of the square. English autumn, and the whistling tiny souls of the dead round the war memorial.
Anthony Burgess
Pete held his rookers and Georgie sort of hooked his rot wide open for him and Dim yanked out his false zoobies, upper and lower. He threw these down on the pavement and then I treated them to the old boot-crush, though they were hard bastards like.... The old veck began to make sort of chumbling shooms - "wuf waf wof” - so Georgie let go of holding his goobers apart and just let him have one in the toothless rot with his ringy fist, and that made the old veck start moaning a lot then, then out comes the blood, my brothers, real beautiful.
Anthony Burgess
Arcadia? The realm of the infinite? It's a poet's corner... It's not a cult or a religion – it's an awareness of your surroundings; you're not going to force yourself on anyone and, equally, no one's going to force themselves on you. And it's about community and pleasure. It came from a whisper through the trees. It came from a crack in the pavement. It can also come when you open a bag of crisps, or when you kick a football against a goalpost. Even if I was winding you up, it would still be true, because Arcadia and the Arcadian Dream is so deep, is so true to our hearts... It can be as powerful as your imagination can allow it to be. But, it can also be as dark and twisted as your soul... Arcadia encompasses the infinite, and that's why it comforts me.
Pete Doherty
I saw the earth open like a huge mouth, then close again over the paved street. An old man was trapped by the foot. I ran to him, told him to be brave while I hacked the pavement with a fireman's axe. But I was too late. The vise tightened, bit his leg off at the knee. I carried him away. His knee is still there, a bloody souvenir sticking out of the earth.
John Fante
