http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/020941.html

Bro #1: It's a nice night out tonight.
Bro #2: Yeah.
Bro #1: I'm sorry your fiance died.
Bro #2: Thanks, dude.

--Bowery

Overheard by: Little Mac Monster Attack

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/020940.html

Girl #1: My friends all say I should hook up with him because then I can say that I hooked up with someone from Poland.
Girl #2: You mean Portland?
Girl #1: Oh, right, I always get those two mixed up!

--46th & 7th

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/020939.html

Dressing room attendant #1: So, you gonna sleep with him?
Dressing room attendant #2: Naw, I ain't gonna sleep with him! I ain't that easy, I ain't no fish!

--The Gap

Overheard by: Sunny

http://feeds.reference.com/click.phdo?i=e0aa67fa1ec0a1f3ebf94ca8fde0c383

http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/archive/2009/11/16.html

hoi polloi: the common people; the masses.

Stony Town
John Shaw Neilson

If ever I go to Stony Town, I'll go as to a fair,
With bells and men and a dance-girl with the heat-wave in her hair:
I'll ask the birds that live in the road; for I dream (though it may not be)
That the eldest song was a forest thought, and the singer was a tree.

Oh, Stony Town is a hard town! It buys and sells and buys:
It will not pity the plights of youth or any love in the eyes:
No curve they follow in Stony Town; but the straight line and the square:
- And the girl shall dance them a royal dance, like a blue wren at his prayer.

Oh, Stony Town is a hard town! It sells and buys and sells:
- Merry men I will take with me, and seven and twenty bells:
The bells will laugh and the men will laugh, and the girl shall shine so fair
With the scent of love and cinnamon shaken out of her hair.

Her skirts shall be of the gossamer, full thirty inches high;
And her lips shall move as the flowers move to see the winds go by:
The men will laugh, and the bells will laugh, to find the world so young;
And the girl shall go as a velvet bird, with a quick step on her tongue.

She shall cry aloud that a million moons for a lover is not long,
And her mouth shall be as the green honey of the honey-eater's song:
- If ever I go to Stony Town, I'll go as to a fair,
And the girl shall shake with the cinnamon and the heat-wave in her hair.

"I began to view the world at large through borrowed eyes, eyes more like those I wanted to own."

"In my view having babies was supposed to be something beautiful, not a duty. Something incredible, not role-playing. Bringing new life into this dying world, promising hope for a sane tomorrow. As I saw it, any expectation of sanity rested in a woman's womb."

"It wasn't like my life had changed at all, and maybe that was part of the problem. Because something inside me was different. Shifting, like a tide or sand dune. That something was growing, stretching, taking shape beneath my skin. And I wondered if very soon it might blow me apart at the seams."

What have I to say to you
When we shall meet?
Yet—
I lie here thinking of you.

The stain of love
Is upon the world.
Yellow, yellow, yellow,
It eats into the leaves,
Smears with saffron
The horned branches that lean
Heavily
Against a smooth purple sky.

There is no light—
Only a honey-thick stain
That drips from leaf to leaf
And limb to limb
Spoiling the colours
Of the whole world.

I am alone.
The weight of love
Has buoyed me up
Till my head
Knocks against the sky.

See me!
My hair is dripping with nectar—
Starlings carry it
On their black wings.
See, at last
My arms and my hands
Are lying idle.

How can I tell
If I shall ever love you again
As I do now?

The Philosopher

I saw him sitting in his door,
Trembling as old men do;
His house was old; his barn was old,
And yet his eyes seemed new.

His eyes had seen three times my years
And kept a twinkle still,
Though they had looked at birth and death
And three graves on a hill.

"I will sit down with you," I said,
"And you will make me wise;
Tell me how you have kept the joy
Still burning in your eyes."

Then like an old-time orator
Impressively he rose;
"I make the most of all that comes,
The least of all that goes."

The jingling rhythm of his words
Echoes as old songs do,
Yet this had kept his eyes alight
Till he was ninety-two.

- Sara Teasdale

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/020938.html

(nurse with elderly lady on wheelchair comes against Asian American pregnant woman with baby in stroller)
Nurse: Oh my, I'm sorry! (pulls back to let woman and child pass)
Asian American pregnant woman: Oh, I'm sorry, I can...
Senile old lady: Get out of the way, chink!
(infant cries)
Asian American pregnant woman: Excuse me?
Nurse: Oh my god! I'm so sorry.
Senile old lady: Don't apologize!
(nurse backs up and lets mother and child through)

--Washington Square Village

Overheard by: zgoldberg

"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

Indeed, I am nothing but a wanderer and a pilgrim on this earth ! And what more are you ?

for others, in spite of myself, from myself.

autrement qu 'être.

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/020937.html

Mom: So Good Luck Chuck kind of sucked, huh?
Teenage daughter: Well, what did they expect? It's Dane Cook and Jessica Alba, for crying out loud! That's bad luck!

--Tomoe Sushi

Overheard by: Sromeo

  
  Two people loving each other make a rebellion of two.
  It is a thundering whisper breaking abuses through.
  
  Two lovers in hay, or woodbine, make God Almighty's light,
  it is like a waltzing ball of innumerous threads of life.
  
  Two people adoring each other resemble two orphan kids
  that cling to the skirt of beauty like puppies reaching for feeds.
  
  They are a sort of skin-readers and linguists of human eyes.
  To understand the tremors they don't need any advice.
  
  The bed-sheets they've crumbled they value more than anything else.
  The names that they whisper are greater than any of greatest names.
  
  It is a serious menace, conspiracy, biggest of all. It is a rebellion of body
  against separation from soul. It is uncontrollable, and it's
  
  like two kingdoms, or two nations merged voluntarily
  without declaring a war. Staring like freaks and sneering,
  
  the crowd have got a good mind to wait for severe punishment
  for love is said to be blind. But would it be worth getting married
  
  if we were to decide to cure ourselves from happiness,
  the pleasure of being blind? If blindness is laughed at squeamishly,
  
  then, I imagine, the world can perish from an explosion,
  and rise from a whispered word.




(Translated from the Russian by Alec Vagapov)
  

"At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide."

drunk on the dark streets of some city,
it's night, you're lost, where's your
room?
you enter a bar to find yourself,
order scotch and water.
damned bar's sloppy wet, it soaks
part of one of your shirt
sleeves.
It's a clip joint-the scotch is weak.
you order a bottle of beer.
Madame Death walks up to you
wearing a dress.
she sits down, you buy her a
beer, she stinks of swamps, presses
a leg against you.
the bar tender sneers.
you've got him worried, he doesn't
know if you're a cop, a killer, a
madman or an
Idiot.
you ask for a vodka.
you pour the vodka into the top of
the beer bottle.
It's one a.m. In a dead cow world.
you ask her how much for head,
drink everything down, it tastes
like machine oil.

you leave Madame Death there,
you leave the sneering bartender
there.

you have remembered where
your room is.
the room with the full bottle of
wine on the dresser.
the room with the dance of the
roaches.
Perfection in the Star Turd
where love died
laughing

All the world will be your enemy, Prince of a thousand enemies.
And when they catch you, they will kill you…


But first, they must catch you.

Each man kills the thing he loves.

"That life is difficult, I have often bitterly realized. I now had further cause for serious reflection. Right up to the present I have never lost the feeling of contradiction that lies behind all knowledge. My life has been miserable and difficult, and yet to others, and sometimes to myself, it has seemed rich and wonderful. Man's life seems to me like a long, weary night that would be intolerable if there were not occasionally flashes of light, the sudden brightness of which is so comforting and wonderful, that the moments of their appearance cancel out and justify the years of darkness."

"Passion is always a mystery and unaccountable, and unfortunately there is no doubt that life does not spare its purest children and often it is just the most deserving people who cannot help loving those that destroy them."