Places

See Also: CITY/STREETSCAPES, INSULTS

1. American cities are like badger holes ringed with trash —John Steinbeck
2. The bargain basement [of store] where everything smelled musty and looked dull … as if a fine rain of dust fell constantly on the discounted merchandise —Joyce Reiser Kornblatt
3. A boarding area in an airport is a little like a waiting room in a dentist’s office. Everyone tries to look unconcerned, but there’s really only one thing on their minds —Jonathan Valin
4. Buckingham Palace … like an old prima donna facing the audience all in white —Virginia Woolf
5. The Capitol buildings look like a version of St. Peter’s and the Vatican turned out by a modern firm —Shane Leslie
6. Chicago … living there is like being married to a woman with a broken nose; there may be lovelier lovelies, but never a lovely so real —Nelson Algren
7. (Some cities never sleep …) Cincinnati sleeps each night like it’s drugged —Jonathan Valin

   Cincinnati may sleep each night yet Valin manages to infuse plenty of action into his Cincinnati-based mystery novels.

8. Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night —Rupert Brooke
9. The city [San Francisco] acted in wartime [WWII] like an intelligent woman under siege. She gave what she couldn’t with safety withhold, and secured those things which lay in her reach —Maya Angelou
10. The city [New York] is like poetry; it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines —E. B. White
11. The city spawned ugliness like a predatory insect spewing out blood-hungry larva —David Niven

    Niven’s simile from his autobiography The Moon’s a Balloon could probably be applied to any high-pressure place or industry.

12. [London during the day] coated with crawling life, as a blossom with blight —Jerome K. Jerome
13. Coming to New York from the muted mistiness of London … is like traveling from a monochrome antique shop to a Technicolor bazaar —Kenneth Tynan
14. Compared to the city, the country looks like the world without its clothes on —Douglas Jerrold
15. Comparing the Brooklyn that I know with Manhattan is like comparing a comfortable and complacent duenna to her more brilliant and neurotic sister —Carson McCullers
16. Dallas, a city that treated conspicuous consumption like an art form —Peter Applebome, New York Times, April 6, 1986
17. The danger and noise make it [New York or Chicago to a country person] seem like a permanent earthquake —William James
18. Detroit, city of lost industrial dreams, floats around us like a mirage of some sane and glaciated life —Richard Ford
19. Detroit lay across the river, a mile away, like a huge pincushion stuck full of lights —Eric Linklater
20. Each thought, each day, each life lies here [in Moscow] as on a laboratory table —Walter Benjamin
21. Fifth Avenue [at Christmas] shone like an enormous blue sugarplum revolving in a tutti-frutti rain of light —Hortense Calisher

    See Also: GLITTER AND GLOSS

22. The gray cloud of Denver’s smog humped over the horizon like a whale’s back —James Crumley
23. Hollywood without Spiegel is like Tahiti without Gauguin —Billy Wilder

    Wilder’s simile was coined in 1986 when Aaron Spiegel died.

    See Also: INCOMPLETENESS

24. Ice hard as iron bands bound the streets of New York —Robert S. Silverberg
25. I’m glad to be here in Pittsburgh because I feel a sense of kinship with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Like my candidacy, they were not given much chance in the spring —John F. Kennedy, on the campaign trail
26. In great cities men are like a lot of stones thrown together in a bag; their jagged corners rubbed off till in the end they are smooth as marbles —W. Somerset Maugham
27. Ireland is something like the bottom of an aquarium, with little people in crannies like prawns —D. H. Lawrence
28. Italy is so tender, like cooked macaroni, yards and yards of soft tenderness, ravelled round everything —D. H. Lawrence
29. Japan offers as much novelty perhaps as an excursion to another planet —Isabella Bird
30. Leaving Los Angeles is like giving up heroin —David Puttnam
31. Life in Russia is like life at an English public school but with politics taking the place of sex —Isaiah Berlin
32. Like a resplendent chandelier, Paris in winter is made up of many parts —W. A. Poers
33. Like many picturesque neighborhoods, it has a chilling uniformity of character, as if the householders propped sternly in their lawn chairs or gazing out from the black space of a porch have been chosen and supplied to ornament their homes —Jonathan Valin
34. Living in England, provincial England, must be like being married to a stupid, but exquisitely beautiful wife —Margaret Halsey
35. (Looking down the wing I could see) the buildings of Manhattan, as tidy and neatly defined as an architect’s model —Madison Smart Bell
36. Moscow … a city landscape wanting neon and city life, as if square miles of squat buildings had been abandoned at the first November snows —George Feifer
37. Most great cities (trail their own death around with them and) sleep, like John Donne, with one foot in the coffin —Jonathan Valin
38. New York … a haven as cosy as toast, cool as an icebox and safe as skyscrapers —Dylan Thomas
39. New York fit him [Nolan Ryan, pitcher for the Astros, formerly the Mets] like a cheap suit —Paul Daugherty, Newsday, October 9, 1986
40. New York … looked like a pagan banner planted on a Christian rampart —Douglas Reed
41. New York’s like a disco, but without the music —Elaine Stritch
42. Omaha is a little like Newark, without Newark’s glamour —Joan Rivers
43. Oaxaca sparkled like a matrix of platinum sequins laid over velvet —Richard Ford
44. Paris was … all little and bright and far away like a picture seen through the wrong end of a field glass —John Dos Passos
45. Places as magical and removed as toy towns under glass —Robert Dunn
46. A public library, like a railway station, gets all kinds. They come in groups, like packaged tours —Helen Hudson
47. Puerto Rico … it is a kind of lost love-child, born to the Spanish Empire and fostered by the United States —Nicholas Wollaston
48. The Statue of Liberty [as seen from the sky] tiny but distinct, like a Japanese doll of herself —Richard Ford
49. Sundays [in New York] the long asphalt looks like a dead beach —Edwin Denby
50. Texas air is so rich you can nourish off it like it was food —Edna Ferber
51. Thousands of funeral markers rise from the ground like dirty alabaster arms —Sin Ai

    The scene described in Sin Ai’s poem Two Brothers is Arlington National Cemetery.

52. To be raised in Philadelphia is like being born with a big nose … you never get over it —Anon
53. To walk along Broadway is like being a ticket in a lottery, a ticket in a glass barrel, being tossed about with all the other tickets —Maeve Brennan
54. Transylvania without me will be like Bucharest on a Monday night —Dialogue in movie Love At First Bite by Count von Dracula
55. The United Nations looked cool and pure, like its charter —Derek Lambert
56. Venice … at once so stately and so materialist, like a proud ghost that has come back to remind men that he failed for a million —Rebecca West
57. Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go —Truman Capote, November 26, 1961 news item
58. Washington, D.C … .at times as cold as its marble facade —Maureen Dowd, New York Times, March 2, 1987
59. Washington, D.C … .looks as if some giant had scattered a box of child’s toys at random on the ground —Captain Basil Hall
60. Washington, D.C … .looks like a large straggling village reared in a drained swamp —George Combe
61. Writing about most American cities is like writing a life of Chester A. Arthur. It can be done, but why do it? —Clifton Fadiman