The City Where We Once Lived Quotes

“I take notes. I ask questions. “So you’re saying this is all a normal process?” He smiles. He says in a moment, “Does anything about this place seem normal?” He shakes his head. “No. This is not normal. It’s simply a response to something that absolutely did not have to happen.”
― Eric Barnes, The City Where We Once Lived

“Neighborhoods dominated by brick buildings and corner stores and baseball in the street were wiped away and replaced by vast and anonymous apartments. Grand homes torn down to make way for low duplexes with few windows and no porches.”
― Eric Barnes, The City Where We Once Lived

“I can hear the boy in the library. The noise of children is unmistakable. Even when they are trying to be quiet. Maybe even more so.”
― Eric Barnes, The City Where We Once Lived

“When this place still had the pretense of being governed, then there was something against which to rebel. That’s when a few storefronts were broken, when some looting occurred, when teenagers ran wild through schools and the library, throwing books and desks against the walls. But when the city government collapsed, when everyone finally walked away from responsibility, then the destruction and rebelling all soon came to an end.”
― Eric Barnes, The City Where We Once Lived

“I’m not sure what else to say. I hope she’ll let me sleep soon. Lie down. Close my eyes. And sleep.”
― Eric Barnes, The City Where We Once Lived

“Most days, even people here don’t think about the levees. They think only about the day before them.”
― Eric Barnes, The City Where We Once Lived

“The light from the windows is unbroken and relentless and I try to remember how many years it’s been since I’ve seen the sun. But what I know is something else. What I know is that I have realized that, truly, I do not want to die.”
― Eric Barnes, The City Where We Once Lived

“All that’s real when I wake up is everything I remember about the people I have lost. Mostly, I wake up crying.”
― Eric Barnes, The City Where We Once Lived

“It’s strange to me that people here would watch television. Or listen to the radio stations that it’s also possible to pick up. I can’t imagine wanting to be reminded that there is a world outside this place. If you wanted to be part of the world, why would you be here?”
― Eric Barnes, The City Where We Once Lived

“Even now, I need some sense of continuity. A sense of purpose greater than what I’ve done today or yesterday. It’s a human need, I think now. One that even I have not been able to leave completely in the past.”
― Eric Barnes, The City Where We Once Lived

“When someone dies in the North End, there is a funeral. Many people attend. It is our only communal act. There are really no other reasons to gather in a crowd.”
― Eric Barnes, The City Where We Once Lived

“But the people here don’t live apart because of fear. There is no violence here anymore, no danger or crime. It’s more that people want to be alone. It’s more that there’s so little to say. It’s more that people are so tired. I’m so tired. It makes me think everyone else is too.”
― Eric Barnes, The City Where We Once Lived

“Sometimes, at night, I would light houses on fire. But no one particularly cared.”
― Eric Barnes, The City Where We Once Lived

“The violence. Hitting someone. It’s not the hurting. It’s the power. The control you think you have.”
― Eric Barnes, The City Where We Once Lived

“Really, we just want our lives back. We want things to be how they once were.”
― Eric Barnes, The City Where We Once Lived

“It’s not that I have ever been taught how to fight. It’s not that I have trained for this. It’s not that I am very strong. I simply have a willingness to hurt this person who’s done something wrong.”
― Eric Barnes, The City Where We Once Lived

“There is, among us sitting on the stage and among the people in the South End who have forgotten about this place and among even the people living here, including the few of them sitting in this room, there is not just an absence of money. There is an absence of will. Desire. Need. And without those things,” she says, sitting forward, “this place will not ever change. Accept that. Because without it, this is how life here will always be.”
― Eric Barnes, The City Where We Once Lived

“Trees, thirty feet tall and black now, are planted in strict order along the avenues and main boulevards leading into and out of downtown. None of them bloom or grow anymore and some have fallen over, tumbling part way, leaning to the side, their massive roots exposed, black now too, and as I walk I touch my hand against each tree. The trunks are smooth, almost slick, as if they’ve been varnished and preserved. It’s a vision of a quiet Armageddon, or an emptied wasteland following a chemical attack. But this is only the wasteland of abuse and inattention.”
― Eric Barnes, The City Where We Once Lived