Coney Island Quotes

• I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island.

  Thornton Wilder

  Love, Islands, Poetic

  New York Journal-American, November 11, 1955.

  84 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is with roses and locomotives (not to mention acrobats Spring electricity Coney Island the 4th of July the eyes of mice and Niagara Falls) that my poems are competing.

  e. e. cummings

  Spring, Fall, 4th Of July

  E. E. Cummings (1996). “Is 5”, p.11, W. W. Norton & Company

  74 Copy quote

  Show source

• Heaven: The Coney Island of the Christian imagination.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Christian, Islands, Imagination

  Harry Persons Taber, Elbert Hubbard (1912). “The Philistine: A Periodical of Protest”

  59 Copy quote

  Show source

• Constantly risking absurdity and death whenever he performs above the heads of his audience, the poet, like an acrobat, climbs on rhyme to a high wire of his own making.

  Lawrence Ferlinghetti

  Wire, Rhyming, Poet

  "At 96, Poet And Beat Publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti Isn't Done Yet". "Morning Edition" with Ari Shapiro, www.npr.org. June 11, 2015.

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• the poet like an acrobat climbs on rime to a high wire of his own making.

  Lawrence Ferlinghetti

  Wire, Rhyming, Poet

  1958 'A Coney Island of the Mind', section 15.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sometimes I feel like the Tom Hanks character in Big. But my life is not a movie. I never have to go back to Coney Island to find the fortune-teller machine so I have to grow up again.

  Shaquille O'Neal

  Basketball, Growing Up, Character

  10 Copy quote

• I took my son to Coney island, I said "wanna go in the crazy house?", he said "save your money we'll be home soon"!

  Rodney Dangerfield

  Funny, Crazy, Home

  7 Copy quote

• There's a different kind of comfort that comes from knowing that you are putting your best foot forward. It's called psychological comfort. Look at a picture of the Coney Island boardwalk in 1925. Men were in full-on three-piece suits, hats. They may have only had one suit. But they pressed it. They made it look as good as possible.

  Tom Ford

  Men, Feet, Knowing

  12 Copy quote

• Beauty stands and waits
  with gravity
  to start her death-defying leap

  Lawrence Ferlinghetti

  Beauty, Waiting, Defying

  Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1958). “A Coney Island of the Mind”, p.30, New Directions Publishing

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'd go to Coney Island to hang out, and I saw a magician doing a rope trick on the boardwalk. I was fascinated. I guess that's how it started.

  David Blaine

  Islands, Rope, Saws

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  52 Copy quote

  Show source

• They can't hurt me. Sure, they can crush you and kill you. They can lay you out on 42nd and Broadway and put hoses on you and flush you in the sewers and put you on the subway and carry you out to Coney island and bury you on the Ferris wheel. But I refuse to sit here and worry about dying.

  Bob Dylan

  Crush, Hurt, Islands

  Bob Dylan (2005). “Bob Dylan: Inspirations”, p.67, Andrews McMeel Publishing

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Never had there been such an opportunity for the dissemination of knowledge…. But the obverse is also true. We can have thrust upon us a false picture of reality as distorting as the trick mirrors in a Coney Island funhouse.

  Howard E. Koch

  Opportunity, Reality, Islands

  4 Copy quote

• I had a great education. From kindergarten to John Dewey High School in Coney Island, I am public-school educated.

  Spike Lee

  School, Islands, Kindergarten

  "Spike Lee Talks Obama, the End of Mookie's Brooklyn, and the Hollywood Color Line". Interview with Will Leitch, www.vulture.com. July 8, 2012.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Back when I lived in Brooklyn, I'd sometimes take the Q train all the way out to Coney Island and back, and work on my laptop. There's something about pushy New Yorkers looking over your shoulder that really makes you produce sentences.

  Joshua Foer

  Islands, Brooklyn, Back When

  4 Copy quote

• I'm one of relatively few stage-trained actors who doesn't much like acting on stage. It feels kind of like riding the Cyclone at Coney Island, which I did when I was eight. When it was all over, I was glad I had done it, but most of the time when it was actually happening, I was just kind of hanging on for dear life.

  Fred Melamed

  Eight, Islands, Acting

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• My family originally lived in Brooklyn. Our first apartment was a little place above my father and uncle's hardware store in Coney Island. Now, don't get the impression that we were surrounded by merry-go-rounds, roller coasters and Ferris wheels. Nope, this was a little side street.

  Gilbert Gottfried

  Uncles, Father, Islands

  10 Copy quote

• When I started off as an actress, I did at a play at the Taper Too Theatre here in Los Angeles, called 'In The Abyss Of Coney Island.' That was more of a dramatic play. It was a small theater house. This was the first time I was literally on the road, doing a play, for four months.

  Vivica Fox

  Islands, Play, House

  Interview with Nathan Rabin, film.avclub.com. February 17, 2010.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source