Just as language no longer has anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connection with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.

In Washington, the first thing people tell you is what their job is. In Los Angeles you learn their star sign. In Houston you’re told how rich they are. And in New York they tell you what their rent is.

A large city cannot be experientially known; its life is too manifold for any individual to be able to participate in it.

The country only has charms for those not obliged to stay there. 

The first requisite to happiness is that a man be born in a famous city.

There is no solitude in the world like that of the big city.

Do you suppose that will change the sense of the morals, the fact that we can’t use morals as a means of judging the city because we couldn’t stand it? And that we’re changing our whole moral system to suit the fact that we’re living in a ridiculous way?

Towns oftener swamp one than carry one out onto the big ocean of life.

No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.

Often an entire city has suffered because of an evil man.

By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted, but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked.

Does anybody really want to attend to cities other than to flee, fleece, privatize, butcher, or decimate them?

The life of the city never lets you go, nor do you ever want it to.