Williamsburg Quotes

#1. This (the tendency to revive the old, and just stay with the old) is true not just of Habad but of Hassidim in generally, whether they are in Williamsburg or Mea She'arim. They are pouring all their energies into reliving an anachronism, so much so that there is no energy left over to live in the present. This attempt at living out an anachronism prevents them, not only from interchanging with the world around them, but even from praying properly, or studying, let alone from perceiving the presence of their children or their wives." (SS: understanding what they need in the presence time and generation).
"I'm not anti-tradition. On the contrary, I'll use anything that will help me get off. I've got a great deal invested in the materials of civilization, like language and vocabulary - booba, zeida, cholent, tallis - they're deeply embedded in the core of my brain, attached to my thalamus, not to the cortex. It would be foolish to deny that they're not part of my make-up. But, if someone says that I must believe in the God who was active at the time of Moses, or Yohannan ben Zakai, or the Baal Shem Tov, my answer is no. #Quote by Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

#2. My family came in 1635 from England and settled in Williamsburg. Shortly after, they split up; half went to New England and half stayed in Virginia. I'm a Virginian Ballard. #Quote by Robert Ballard

#3. If. If Mingus Rude could be kept in this place, kept somehow in Dylan's pocket, in his stinging, smudgy hands, then summer wouldn't give way to whatever came after. If. If. Fat chance. Summer on Dean Street had lasted one day and that day was over, it was dark out, had been for hours. The Williamsburg Savings Bank tower clock read nine-thirty in red-and-blue neon. Final score, a million to nothing. The million-dollar kid.
Your school wasn't on fire, you were. #Quote by Jonathan Lethem

#4. I've met the folk that have the perfect garlands and sprays and wreaths, the folk that live in Williamsburg-style houses. And I've met the folk that live at the edge of town in two-bedroom ranch houses that have Frosty the Snowman, lights playing tag around the roof, and a Rudolph stuck askew somewhere on the lawn. I'd rather sit in the home of the atter with and errant couch spring poking my derriere because, truthfully, they're glad to have me, and they never look at my shoes and wonder where I'd been before I got there. #Quote by Lisa Samson

#5. No offense to Bushwick, where all my neighbors greeted me on the street and there is a growing arts community and a curious beauty to its industrial zone, but Bushwick is no Williamsburg, even if the real estate agents would have you believe it is. #Quote by Jami Attenberg

#6. This is the book, then , and the book of Shakespeare. And every day you must read a page of each to your child
even though you yourself do not understand what is written down and cannot sound the words properly. You must do this that the child will grow up knowing of what is great
knowing that these tenements of Williamsburg are not the whole world."
Katie: " The Protestant Bible and Shakespeare. #Quote by Betty Smith

#7. For Jefferson, William and Mary was largely about what university life is supposed to be about: reading books, enjoying the company of like-minded, and savoring teachers who seemed to be ambassadors from other, richer, writer worlds. Jefferson believed Williamsburg the finest school of manners and morals that ever existed in America. #Quote by Jon Meacham

#8. My favourite outfit was this black lace dress that I found in a vintage shop in Williamsburg, New York. #Quote by Abbey Lee Kershaw

#9. Saturdays are set for antique shops. Williamsburg in Brooklyn has some good ones. I get in there and start meddling around with dusty boxes and rickety, worn-in stuff. I like it when I find something with someone else's name on it. #Quote by Valerie June

#10. I have a lot of energy. I have a great desire to absorb information. I'm not a sponge exactly, but I find that something I look at - just walking around Williamsburg, for example - is a great opportunity for ideas. I've been here before, I've seen things before, but now my eye gets keener and keener. So I can pick up little things: just the pattern of a brick walk, or the way they've attached a light to a house. #Quote by Martha Stewart

#11. Although the clientele were primarily the Eloi of the Lower East Side and Williamsburg, an incident a month earlier had involved a platinumed-out crew of Bronx Morlocks: #Quote by Richard Price

#12. I was living and working at a bar in Williamsburg, a young, artsy, vibrant neighbourhood, and nobody had any preconceptions about who I was. I could be myself, in all my flawed glory, and it was liberating. Taking charge of my own life. Figuring out what truly made me happy and surrounding myself with people I liked hanging out with. #Quote by Emery Rose

#13. Night baseball isn't an aberration. What's an aberration is a team that hasn't won a World Series since 1908. They tend to think of themselves as a little Williamsburg, a cute little replica of a major league franchise. Give me the Oakland A's, thank you very much. People who do it right. #Quote by George Will

#14. You know, like, there's songs like "Valerie" and "Bang Bang Bang" that I was so proud of. And, you know, the level of success that they had - if they were little cult hits meant that, you know, I could sellout Webster Hall or Williamsburg Musical Hall or the El Rey theater in LA. Like, that was having made it to me. So the thought of having a number one song in my own career, like, never even registered. #Quote by Mark Ronson

#15. Ave Maria
BY FRANK O'HARA
Mothers of America
let your kids go to the movies!
get them out of the house so they won't know what you're up to
it's true that fresh air is good for the body
but what about the soul
that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images
and when you grow old as grow old you must
they won't hate you
they won't criticize you they won't know
they'll be in some glamorous country
they first saw on a Saturday afternoon or playing hookey

they may even be grateful to you
for their first sexual experience
which only cost you a quarter
and didn't upset the peaceful home
they will know where candy bars come from
and gratuitous bags of popcorn
as gratuitous as leaving the movie before it's over
with a pleasant stranger whose apartment is in the Heaven on Earth Bldg
near the Williamsburg Bridge
oh mothers you will have made the little tykes
so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies
they won't know the difference
and if somebody does it'll be sheer gravy
and they'll have been truly entertained either way
instead of hanging around the yard
or up in their room
hating you
prematurely since you won't have done anything horribly mean yet
except keeping them from the darker joys
it's unforgivable the latter
so don't blame me if you won't take this advice
and #Quote by Frank O'Hara

#16. I live in the East Village, and occasionally people will recognize me there. When I'm in Williamsburg, I always get recognized. Midtown, not so much. #Quote by Andrew Rannells

#17. The two guys who ran the place, always in Williamsburg hipster uniforms of short-sleeved shirts and neatly trimmed beards that looked stuck on with spirit gum, paid, as ever, no attention to anything but the food and the money. Tallow imagined that every night they counted their money and prided themselves on having not made eye contact with anything human. #Quote by Warren Ellis

#18. And here in this other realm she looms over him, vast and sprawling, wildly patchwork and dense. Not just older and bigger. Stronger in many ways: her arms and core are thick with muscled neighborhoods that each have their own rhythms and reputations. Williamsburg, Hasidim enclave and artist haven turned hipster ground zero. Bed Stuy (do or die). Crown Heights, where now the only riots are over seats at brunch. Her jaw is tight with the stubborn ferocity of Brighton Beach's old mobsters and the Rockaways' working-class holdouts against the brutal inevitability of rising seas. But there are spires at Brooklyn's heart, too- perhaps not as grand as his own, and maybe some of hers are actually the airy, fanciful amusement-park towers of Coney Island- but all are just as shining, just as sharp. #Quote by N.K. Jemisin

#19. Filth, filth, filth, from morning to night. I know they're poor but they could wash. Water is free and soap is cheap. Just look at that arm, nurse.'
The nurse looked and clucked in horror. Francie stood there with the hot flamepoints of shame burning her face. The doctor was a Harvard man, interning at the neighborhood hospital. Once a week, he was obliged to put in a few hours at one of the free clinics. He was going into a smart practice in Boston when his internship was over. Adopting the phraseology of the neighborhood, he referred to his Brooklyn internship as going through Purgatory, when he wrote to his socially prominent fiancee in Boston.
The nurse was as Williamsburg girl... The child of poor Polish immigrants, she had been ambitious, worked days in a sweatshop and gone to school at night. Somehow she had gotten her training... She didn't want anyone to know she had come from the slums.
After the doctor's outburst, Francie stood hanging her head. She was a dirty girl. That's what the doctor meant. He was talking more quietly now asking the nurse how that kind of people could survive; that it would be a better world if they were all sterilized and couldn't breed anymore. Did that mean he wanted her to die? Would he do something to make her die because her hands and arms were dirty from the mud pies?
She looked at the nurse... She thought the nurse might say something like:
Maybe this little girl's mother works and didn't have time to wash he #Quote by Betty Smith

#20. Met a guy named Bill once. We met in Williamsburg and discussed the Bill of Rights and duck's beaks. #Quote by Jarod Kintz

#21. Maybe I could get a job in Colonial Williamsburg," I say, trying to get into the spirit. "I could churn butter. Wear period garb. Like, a calico dress with an apron or whatever they wore in Colonial times. I've heard they're not allowed to speak to each other in modern-day language, and kids are always trying to trip them up. That could be fun. The only thing is, I'm not sure if they hire Asian people because of historical accuracy…"
"Lara Jean, we live in the time of Hamilton! Phillipa Soo is half-Chinese, remember? If she can play Eliza Hamilton, you can churn butter. #Quote by Jenny Han

#22. Today nearly every schoolchildren knows the town of Williamsburg. That that is the case is due not so much to the great history that happened here but to the vision of one man - William Archer Rutherfoord Goodwin. To be sure, Williamsburg, which served as capital of Virginia from 1699 to 1780, saw its share of notable events, most significantly the fiery rhetoric in the Virginia Capitol by Patrick Henry and brush-ups during the Revolutionary War and Civil War. But after the capital shuffled off to Richmond in 1780 the town led a mostly somnambulant existence for a century and a half. #Quote by Doug Gelbert

#23. Williamsburg was stifling, narcotized by the heat. #Quote by Chaim Potok