Outside Lies Magic Quotes

“In the first two decades of the twentieth century, experts advised men to have their kitchens painted apple-green. The experts believed that apple-green quieted nervous people, and especially wives beginning to think of suffrage, of careers beyond the home. Today the explorer of color schemes finds in old houses and apartments the apple-green paint still gracing the inside of the cabinet under the kitchen sink, and the hallways of old police stations and insane asylums.”
― John R. Stilgoe, Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places

“Photography threatens because photography implies notice and permanent record.”
― John R. Stilgoe, Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places

“The small town endures as the national attic of American social and spatial consciousness, a sort of frame through which further vistas are invariably viewed and twisted to fit.”
― John R. Stilgoe, Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places

“I also hope this book makes each reader aware that his or her personal observations and encounters in the most ordinary of landscapes can and will raise questions and issues routinely avoided by programmed educational and entertainment authorities.”
― John R. Stilgoe, Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places

“Exploration is a liberal art, because it is an art that liberates, that frees, that opens away from narrowness. And it is fun.”
― John R. Stilgoe, Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places

“Ordinary exploration begins in the juiciest sort of indecision, in deliberate, then routine fits of absence of mind... Exploring requires the cloak of invisibility bicyclists and walkers take for granted.”
― John R. Stilgoe, Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places

“I wonder if more students would do better in elementary and high school if teachers taught more about individual exploration of subjects and less about sliding smoothly along observational ruts. Exploration is a liberal art, because it is an art that liberates, that frees, that opens away from narrowness. And it is fun.”
― John R. Stilgoe, Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places