Freeways Quotes

“Like so many named places in California it was less an identifiable city than a grouping of concepts--census tracts, special purpose bond-issue districts, shopping nuclei, all overlaid with access roads to its own freeway.”
― Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

“You can't take highways during the apocalypse, because they'll be packed with panicky people.”
― J. Cornell Michel, Jordan's Brains: A Zombie Evolution

“Faster is fatal, slower is safe.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“On the freeway of life, Lisa Watson was stuck at the entrance ramp, trapped behind a cautious old lady in a Buick.”
― Judy Nichols, Caviar Dreams

“At its outset in the mid-1960s, the historic preservation movement contributed to the racial splintering of the nation's urban fabric. It denied the freeway's entry into communities deemed historic while granting its passage through communities judged differently. It empowered some communities in their fight against the freeway while putting others at a disadvantage. In the disproportionate number of black communities that bore the brunt of urban highway construction, the preservation strategy had no chance, leaving displaced residents with a meager set of resources to recuperate their connection to the past. This is why we need to pay attention to murals, festivals, autobiographies, oral histories, and archival efforts. In the high-stakes struggles over the fate of the American city, these were the "weapons of the weak," the tools invented by displaced communities to fight the forced erasures of their past.”
― Eric Avila, The Folklore of the Freeway: Race and Revolt in the Modernist City

“...the freeway looks like a ruby bracelet stretched alongside a diamond one, looks like a rive of lava flowing counter to a river of champagne bubbles.

[Hadley Baxter]”
― Maggie Shipstead, Great Circle