There are cities that get by on their good looks, offer climate and scenery, views of mountains or oceans, rockbound or with palm trees; and there are cities like Detroit that have to work for...

Planning is for the world’s great cities, for Paris, London, and Rome, for cities dedicated, at some level, to culture. Detroit, on the other hand, was an American city and therefore dedicated to money, and...

The industrial part of Detroit is really the most interesting side, otherwise it’s like the rest of the United States, ugly and stupid.

in Detroit, in July of 1967, what happened was no less than a guerrilla uprising.The Second American Revolution.

The BEST revenge is to be fabulous.

Many Detroiters, for example, are beginning to see urban agriculture as a real part of the solution; to grow things right where people live, where they work, and definitely need healthier food on the table....

As [William] Valentiner noted in his uncompleted memoirs Remembering Artists, [Diego] Rivera’s [Detroit Industry] murals rooted the Detroit Institute of Arts to the many-faceted jewel of its central court because of the harmonious, fertile relationship...

And I’ll close by saying this. Because anti-Semitism is the godfather of racism and the gateway to tyranny and fascism and war, it is to be regarded not as the enemy of the Jewish people,...

I bought salvation from a man on the street. He said, “Go down to the beach and let the waves wash your feet.

When you are already in Detroit, you don’t have to take a bus to get there.

In my previous murals, I had tried to achieve a harmony in my painting with the architecture of the building. But to attempt such a harmony in the garden of the Institute would have defeated...

If a man hasn’t found something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.

My mum’s American. She’s from Detroit.

I spent the two and one-half months between my meeting with the Art Commission and the beginning of my actual mural work in soaking up impressions of the productive activities of the city. I studied...

Detroit is big enough to matter in the world and small enough for you to matter in it.

That Detroit ultimately concentrated on automobiles could be traced to one genius, Henry Ford…. But that the necessary human energy for this development existed in Detroit could be proven through its early history…. I told...

While working in California, I met William Valentiner and Edgar Richardson of the Detroit Institute of Arts. I mentioned a desire which I had to paint a series of murals about the industries of the...

It’s a neighborhood where every dad has at least one job and where parents often end conversations with the words: no guts, no glory.

The first thing I encountered on entering the museum was the earliest steam engine built in England. As I walked on, marveling at each successive mechanical wonder, I realized that I was witnessing the history...

I guess this means we’re uck-fayed, don’t it Mikee?

Go ahead and laugh at Detroit. Because you are laughing at yourself.

[S]tart at the turn of the last century, in 1901, with the celebration of Detroit’s bicentennial. That was the Detroit that came before–before all the racket that attended the making of the modern world, which...

It’s hard not to empathize with the mayor’s anger, given the injustices he’d suffered, but righteous anger rarely leads to wise policy.

…Americans didn’t stick to cities, which makes us different from the people in other industrialized countries. We no sooner arrived in town, turning those towns into great mid-century metropolises, than we decided to take off...

People who die in Detroit and then go to hell probably think they’re in heaven. I know, because I’ve been to Cleveland.

Detroit is just like everywhere else, only more so–a lot more so.