Cities Quote by Jonathan Raban

No president has come near to rivaling Lincoln as a writer.

— Jonathan Raban

All this piling up of one technology on top of another-railroad on steamboat, interstate highway on railroad, hydroelectric dam on watermill-had reduced the Mississippi…

— Jonathan Raban

Life, as the most ancient of all metaphors insists, is a journey; and the travel book, in its deceptive simulation of the journey's fits…

— Jonathan Raban

Inaugurals conventionally start with a history lesson and finish with a prayer.

— Jonathan Raban

When New Yorkers tell one about the dangers of their city, the muggings, the dinner parties to which no one turns up for fear…

— Jonathan Raban

My new city [Seattle] and its hinterland felt deceptively homely. Their similar latitude gave them the angular light and lingering evenings I was used…

— Jonathan Raban

At night, what you see is a city, because all you see is lights. By day, it doesn't look like a city at all.…

— Jonathan Raban

Because Washington state now votes by mail, elections here tend to play out, at an agonizingly slow speed, over many days and, sometimes, weeks.

— Jonathan Raban

The only nation I've ever been tempted to feel really racist about are the Swiss - a whole country of phobic hand washers living…

— Jonathan Raban

The [travel] writer, looking back at the journey from a distance of a year or two (or three), is a different character from the…

— Jonathan Raban

The mythical America?that marvellous, heroic, sentimental landwas an object of faith. It challenged you to make the believer's leap over the rude facts at…

— Jonathan Raban

Over emphatic negatives always suggest that what is being denied may be what is really being asserted.

— Jonathan Raban