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9faeca3
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How reprehensible it is when those blessed with commodities insist on ignoring the poor. Better to torment them, force them into indentured servitude, inflict compulsion and blows--this at least produces a connection, fury and a pounding heart, and these too constitute a form of relationship. But to cower in elegant homes behind golden garden gates, fearful lest the breath of warm humankind touch you, unable to indulge in extravagances for fear they might be glimpsed by the embittered oppressed, to oppress and yet lack the courage to show yourself as an oppressor, even to fear the ones you are oppressing, feeling ill at ease in your own wealth and begrudging others their ease, to resort to disagreeable weapons that require neither true audacity nor manly courage, to have money, but only money, without splendor: That's what things look like in our cities at present
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money
poverty
wealth
courage
class-warfare
neighborhoods
urban
urbanization
poor
cowardice
inequality
oppression
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Robert Walser |
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5c8bed9
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If not for the rats you could crawl beneath a bush. A bush. A bench. The alliterative universe. Rats too can pass through that needle's eye to enter heaven. . . . This box held a refrigerator, the refrigerator is an apartment, a man is in the box. . . . Wake up on the grass, soaking wet. Dew is the piss of God. 'Another bullshit night in suck city, my father mutters.
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urban
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Nick Flynn |
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1a6dcf5
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"When I was three years old and in my mother's arms, she looked down at me and said, "Son, the way I'm taking care of you now, when you get old, always have a woman to take care of you like this." Dig this! All I'm goin' do is rest and dress, buy gasoline and lean. I'm goin' buy diamond rings and have the best of everything. I'm goin' pimp whores."
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lifestyle
urban
street
choices
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Donald Goines |
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d6a4d43
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Winter was gray and mean upon the city and every night was a package of cold bleak hours, like the hours in a cell that had no door.
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winter
urban
noir
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David Goodis |
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198b07f
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The neighborhood stores are an important part of a city child's life.
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urban
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Betty Smith |
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f318752
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A cat came out of an alley, took a look at all the snow, and went back in. Farther on up the street a fat man, aproned and puffing, emerged from a restaurant and whiffed the cold air and gazed yearningly at the sky. As though even the dreams were up there, much too far away.
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urban
streets
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David Goodis |
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607a63a
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But believe it or not, I really do like to read. I don't think anyone can ever pull the wool over your eyes if you stay prayed up and read. Frederick Douglass said that no man can be a slave if he has knowledge.
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fiction
wisdom
frederick-douglass
marcel
remains-to-be-seen
brandi-bates
urban
los-angeles
knowledge
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Brandi L. Bates |
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3a5e835
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I keep forgetting that if you live in a big city only mad people talk to themselves.
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rural
urban
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Jeanette Winterson |
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b30f0bc
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"...So, um, you're from Rochester? Like, New York?" Jersey asked. "Yup, we used to live out there," Rudger confirmed, nonchalant. "You ever been?" "Naw, the closest I've ever been to there would be... well, believe it or not, New Jersey, the place where my parents named me after. It was crowded, polluted and full of crime... I loved it."
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travel
love
angst
urban
pollution
new-jersey
teenagers
crime
crowd
city
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Rebecca McNutt |
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05400ba
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Christian name hell! I'm naming my son just what he is. I'm a whore and he is my son. If he grows up ashamed of me, the hell with him. That's what I'm wantin' to name him, and that's what it's goin' to be. Whoreson!
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character-quotes
choices-based-on-acceptance
quoting-books
street-literature
urban-fiction
urban
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Donald Goines |