Virtually all ideologues, of any variety, are fearful and insecure, which is why they are drawn to ideologies that promise prefabricated answers for all circumstances.

[Cities] are not like suburbs, only denser. They differ from towns and suburbs in basic ways, and one of these is that cities are, by definition, full of strangers.

Dull, inert cities, it is true, do contain the seeds of their own destruction and little else. But lively, diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration, with energy enough to carry over for problems and needs outside themselves.

Unity, like so many good things, is good only in moderation.

People who think of themselves as exiles, I find, can never really put their lives together, really.

Cities never flourish alone. They have to be trading with other cities.

The notion that you could discard the old world and now make a new one. This is what was so bad about Modernism.