New Jersey Quotes

“People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah's ark carried dinosaurs. This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it's about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson

“Wait." Clary was suddenly nervous. "The melted metal-it could be, like, toxic or something."
Maia snorted. "I'm from New Jersey. I born in toxic sludge.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Ashes

“So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“I’m nobody’s sidekick,” Annabeth growled. “And, Percy, his accent sounds familiar because he sounds like his mother. We killed her in New Jersey.”
Percy frowned. “I’m pretty sure that accent isn’t New Jersey. Who’s his—? Oh.”
It all fell into place. Aunty Em’s Garden Gnome Emporium—the lair of Medusa. She’d talked with that same accent, at least until Percy had cut off her head.
“Medusa is your mom?” he asked. “Dude, that sucks for you.”
― Rick Riordan, The Mark of Athena

“And I'm sure than in Poland, or somewhere, it is considered cool to drive a Porsche and wear necklaces and black silk, but at least back in Brooklyn if you did those things you were either a drug dealer or from New Jersey.”
― Meg Cabot, Ninth Key

“[Stephanie] That's not the point. I can't just let monkeys loose in Trenton.
[Lula] Why not? There's all kinds of crazy shit loose in Trenton.”
― Janet Evanovich, Plum Spooky

“These are tough times for state governments. Huge deficits loom almost everywhere, from California to New York, from New Jersey to Texas.

Wait—Texas? Wasn't Texas supposed to be thriving even as the rest of America suffered? Didn't its governor declare, during his re-election campaign, that 'we have billions in surplus'? Yes, it was, and yes, he did. But reality has now intruded, in the form of a deficit expected to run as high as $25 billion over the next two years.

And that reality has implications for the nation as a whole. For Texas is where the modern conservative theory of budgeting—the belief that you should never raise taxes under any circumstances, that you can always balance the budget by cutting wasteful spending—has been implemented most completely. If the theory can't make it there, it can't make it anywhere.”
― Paul Krugman

“I've never been in this part of Trenton before. I don't feel comfortable driving around buildings that haven't got gang slogans sprayed on them. Look at this place. No boarded-up windows. No garbage in the gutter. No brothers selling goods on the street. Don't know how people can live like this.”
― Janet Evanovich, Three to Get Deadly

“The curtain rises on a vast primitive wasteland, not unlike certain parts of New jersey.”
― Woody Allen

“I watched commercial ave. slide past and there in the distance were the lights of route 18. that was one of those moments that would always be Rutgers for me.”
― Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“I celebrate ideals of individual excellence, self-reliance, and personal responsibility… But rugged individualism alone did not get us to the moon. It did not end slavery, win World War II, pass the Voting Rights Act, or bring down the Berlin Wall. It didn’t build our dams, bridges, and highways, or map the human genome. Our most lasting accomplishments require mutual effort and shared sacrifice; this is an idea that is woven into the very fabric of this country.”
― Cory Booker, United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good

“One man may shoot himself in the forehead with a .38 and wake up in the hospital. Another may shoot himself in the forehead with a .22 and wake up in hell...if there is such a place. I tend to believe it's here on earth, possibly in New Jersey.”
― Stephen King, Skeleton Crew

“I will believe anything about deer. Deer, in my opinion, are rats with antlers, roaches with split hooves, denizens of the dark primeval suburbs. Deer intensely suggest New Jersey. One of the densest concentrations of wild deer in the United States inhabits the part of New Jersey that, as it happens, I inhabit, too. Deer like people. They like to be near people. They like beanfields, head lettuce, and anybody’s apples. They like hibiscus, begonias, impatiens, azaleas, rhododendrons, boxwood, and wandering Jews. I once saw a buck with a big eight-point rocking-chair rack looking magnificent as he stood between two tractor-trailers in the Frito-Lay parking lot in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Deer use the sidewalks in the heart of Princeton.”
― John McPhee

“The refreshing serenity of mountains, streams and more forests in Pennsylvania gave way to small communities and the more thickly-settled towns of New Jersey. And finally, New York City.

It took us six days to get there, and as I crossed the George Washington Bridge I remember thinking how amazing this was. I was back in New York. A city that takes no crap.

I was back amongst Carefree Scamps who I could trust with my life”
― Karl Wiggins, Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe

“Bib Block was sure that in any part of the country at all, whenever the name of this road was mentioned, people's hearts pivoted like Moslems to the east and flopped over. Sooner of later, he believed, at one stage of the journey or another, all roads led to the New Jersey Turnpike.”
― Kathryn Kramer, A Handbook for Visitors from Outer Space: Novel

“Gov. Christie says 'New Jersey First.' State-based Isolationism!”
― Jonah Goldberg

“O enchanted land of my childhood, a cultural petri dish from which regularly issues forth greatness. New Jersey, in case you didn't know it, has got beaches. And they're not all crawling with roid-raging trolls with reality shows. I grew up summering on those beaches and they are awesome. Jersey's got farmland, beautiful bedroom communities where that woman from "Real Housewives" who looks like Dr. Zaius does not live nor anyone like her. Even the refineries, the endless cloverleaves of turnpikes and expressway twisting and unknowable patterns over the wetlands that are to me somehow beautiful. To know Jersey is to love her.”
― Anthony Bourdain

“When you stand on the banks
of Penn Swamp Pond in August,
those injuries can save your life
and keep you picking till the bush is bare.”
― Charles Rafferty, Where the Glories of April Lead

“...if Nonna sensed weakness, she'd zero in for the kill”
― Rosie Genova, The Wedding Soup Murder

“I used to wonder why people made New Jersey jokes. I don't anymore.”
― E.J. Copperman, An Uninvited Ghost

“Italy, despite its earthiness and charm, can never be New Jersey. Here we value evolution and change; Italy, while it warms the heart, is a monument to the past. In America we change our rooms as often as our fashions. In Italy you're likely to find throw pillows older than the Shroud of Turin. It's just a different way to live.”
― Adriana Trigiani, Rococo

“Through a trick lighting technique
the skyline was made and faded
with the care of a pointillist—
maybe aiding us to think nothing was
missing. We traded verbs

about what was happening
in the metropolis, realizing,
in the scorched plum of dusk,
actual human infinity was occurring
on an island before us....”
― Kristen Henderson, Of My Maiden Smoking

“At the top of the Palisades in Weehawken, New Jersey is a small park known as the Dueling Grounds. This Revolutionary War site, overlooking New York City to the east, and what had been Half Moon Bay to the north is where Alexander Hamilton, a founding father of the United States, was mortally wounded by a single shot from Aaron Burr’s dueling pistol on the morning of July 11, 1804. He died the following day in Greenwich Village, across the river in New York City. The duel was because Hamilton, the former secretary of the treasury, interfered with Aaron Burr’s bid for the presidency of the United States and again, by successfully opposing his candidacy for governor of New York. Burr’s vindictive retaliation cost Hamilton his life.”
― Captain Hank Bracker, "Seawater One...."

“Well, it’s the story of the founding of a New Jersey town, and its citizens, and the American Revolution. With some singing and dancing and a turntable.”
― Suzanne Trauth

“Frank Hague, the Mayor of Jersey City between May 15, 1917 and June 17, 1947, was known as one of the most corrupt party bosses in the country, if not the most corrupt, at a time when there were many. In many ways, he was thought of in a similar fashion as Robin Hood, taking from the rich and giving to the poor, as well as to himself. His spacious office had a specially made cherry-topped, wooden desk with a lap-height drawer that was pushed towards contributors, who in turn placed large amounts of cash into it, to gain favors from the “Boss of the Organization.” This desk can still be seen at City Hall.”
― Captain Hank Bracker, "Seawater One"

“Delores was hot! She was a very attractive woman in her mid-thirties, which at my age I considered to be an older woman. She lived in Dumont, New Jersey, and my mother suggested that I visit her and confirm the arrangements she had made with her brother. That Saturday I caught a Public Service bus from Journal Square to Dumont. It didn’t take long to get there and before I knew it, I was at her door. Delores was a divorcee and I enjoyed the feeling that she liked me. She didn’t do anything inappropriate, but I felt that she would have if she could have! Knowing that she was a coworker and friend of my mother, her very close presence seemed awkward. Sitting on her living room couch so close to her was exciting, so I didn’t move away. I was amazed at her television set and was torn between looking at her cleavage and looking at this new contraption that could receive moving pictures through the air.”
― Captain Hank Bracker, "Seawater One"

“Newark, New Jersey. The bad part. Almost a redundancy.
Decay was the first word that came to mind. The buildings were more than falling apart - they actually seemed to be breaking down, melting from some sort of acid onslaught. Here urban renewal was about as familiar a concept as time travel. The surroundings looked more like a war newsreel - Frankfurt after the Allies' bombing - than a habitable dwelling.”
― Harlan Coben, One False Move

“Because New Jersey is the “Garden State,” I connected the word gardening to what was around me: large fields of grass for horse farms broken up by occasional forests, orchards, or corn fields that then abutted abruptly into cookie cutter housing developments and their smaller dollops of grass. That we lived in the smack middle of the state only solidified the association

garden = grass”
― Matt Puchalski, A Pandemic Gardening Journal

“The third shooting happened at a kosher grocery store abut twenty minutes from my house. Antisemitic screeds found in the attacker’ vehicle and in their social media postings told a different story, as did the tactical gear they wore, the massive stash of ammunition and firearm they brought along, and security camera footage showing them driving slowly down the street, checking addresses before parking and entering the market with guns blazing. The real targets, authorities surmised, were likely the fifty Jewish children in the private elementary school at the same address, directly above the store – huddled in closets, listening to their neighbors being murdered. Reporting within hours of the attack gave surprising emphasis to the murdered Jews as “gentrifying” a “minority” neighborhood This was remarkable, given that the tiny Hasidic community in question, highly visible members of the word’s most visible members of the world’s most consistently persecuted minority, came to Jersey City fleeing gentrification, after being priced out of long-established Hasidic communities in Brooklyn. The “context” supplied by news outlets after this attack was breathtaking in its cruelty. The sole motivation for providing such “context” in that moment is to inform the public that those people got what was coming to them. People who think of themselves as educated and ethical don’t do this because it is both factually untrue and morally wrong. But if we’re talking about Hasidic Jews, it is quite literally a different story.”
― Dara Horn, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present

“Carol Hipkins, a beacon of creativity, has always danced to the rhythm of her own artistic passions. With a background in hairstyling that spans decades, she has mastered the art of transforming hair into works of art.”
― Carol Hipkins