#brooklyn

Brighton Beach does not look, smell, or sound like Russia. It's a parody of Russia at best, something as different from the real thing as a picture of the Eiffel Tower. Yes, they sell Russian food on Brighton Beach, and Russian books and videos, and Russian clothes, and there are Russian restaurants and Russian nightclubs, and everybody speaks Russian, but the Russianness of the place is so concentrated that it feels ridiculously exaggerated. Everything Russian on Brighton Beach is too Russian, far more Russian than in real Russia. This is what happens all over Brooklyn. From the Scandinavians of Bay Ridge to the Chinese of Sunset Park, Brooklyn's immigrants go to ridiculous extremes to re-create their homelands only to end up with a vulgar pastiche. ↗

— Lara Vapnyar

#brooklyn-was-mine #essays #memoirs #food

Men were good for one thing only. Killing spiders. Other than that, I was on my own. It was sad though. Where was the chivalry of yesteryear? ↗

— Kate Carlisle

#funny #kate-carlisle #funny

Someday you'll remember what I said and you'll thank me for it." Francie wished adults would stop telling her that. Already the load of thanks in the future was weighing her down. She figured she'd have to spend the best years of her womanhood hunting up people to tell them that they were right and to thank them. ↗

— Betty Smith

#betty-smith #humor #thanks #humor

It avails not, time nor place--distance avails not, I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence, Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt, Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd, Just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh'd, Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood yet was hurried, Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the thick-stemm'd pipes of steamboats, I look'd. ↗

— Walt Whitman

#men

I had taken on the color of the climate around me and had driven back all the emotion that rose from the Brooklyn streets so that I could belong to the exclusive club of Congress. ↗

— Emanuel Celler

#back #belong #brooklyn #climate #club

I went to Brooklyn College and met this beautiful Jewish girl named Merle, with dark hair, exotic looking and brilliant. So we got married and had three children. ↗

— Dominic Chianese

#brilliant #brooklyn #children #college #dark

I'm from Brooklyn. I grew up very poor- seven people, four rooms. My dad had no education. ↗

— Peter Criss

#dad #education #four #grew #had

Brooklyn is not the easiest place to grow up in, although I wouldn't change that experience for anything. ↗

— Neil Diamond

#anything #brooklyn #change #easiest #experience

I never realized that growing up in Brooklyn, flying jets, working on Wall Street and starring in a sci-fi series was the prerequisite for the fast-paced demands of talk radio. But, if that's what it takes to succeed, I'm glad I did it all. ↗

— Jerry Doyle

#demands #did #fast-paced #flying #glad

I had to say it gave me a warm feeling to picture Meredith Winslow spending twenty years or so in an ill fitting orange jumpsuit, cozying up to a great big girl named Beulah ↗

— Kate Carlisle

#funny #kate-carlisle #funny