Quote

Despite the obvious damage now visible in the entropic desolation of every American home town, Wal-Mart managed to install itself in the pantheon of American Dream icons, along with apple pie, motherhood, and Coca Cola.

James Howard Kunstler

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

James Howard Kunstler
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: October 19
Author
Environmentalist
Journalist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
New York City
New York
Towns
Pie
Despite
Managed
Install
Obvious
Apple
Pantheon
Along
Motherhood
Cola
American
Apples
Coca
Dream
Damage
Mart
Home
Visible
Desolation
Every
Town
Icons

More quotes by James Howard Kunstler

Image
Ridicule is the unfortunate destiny of the ridiculous.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
The suburban cycle which began a hundred years ago is nearly over. We are in for a period of contraction and economic hardship.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
I don't like talking about 'solutions.' I prefer talking about intelligent responses.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
Government at all levels in the USA right now is engaged in a quixotic campaign to sustain the unsustainable. We're determined to run WalMart, Disney World, the Interstate Highways, suburbia, and an imperial military by other means than oil. We'll squander a lot of dwindling resources in the process.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
Painting allows me to use other portions of my brain pleasurably. Irony plays no part in what or how I paint. I paint the particular subject matter not to make polemical points but because I am interested in the human imprint on the landscape. I paint the landscape of my time and place with the stuff in it.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
The immersive ugliness of our everyday environments in America is entropy made visible.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
Motion is a great tranquilizer.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
Once energy problems gain traction, there will be a large new class of economic losers, and consequently a lot of social turbulence.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
It is worth remembering that our cities occupy important sites, and therefore some kind of settlement is liable to be there.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
Of course, the toxic bullshit of incessant advertising and show biz for nearly a century has stripped us of cognitive abilities for dealing with reality that used to be part of the normal equipment of adulthood - for instance, knowing the difference between wishing for stuff and making stuff happen. We bamboozled ourselves with too much magic.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
We have to do commerce differently because the WalMart system of big box chain retail will soon die. This means rebuilding local main street economies (networks of local economic interdependency).
James Howard Kunstler
Image
In my view, suburbia in general has very poor prospects. I think it will only become devalued and probably more dangerous. It's chief characteristic was that it represented a living arrangement with no future - and that future is now here.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
Two decades from now, I doubt that the home building industry, so called, will even exist as we have known it.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
Consider how badly-built suburbia is. Many business buildings are not designed to outlast their tax depreciation periods, and the McHouses are made of particle board, vinyl siding, and stapled-on trim. A lot of suburbia will simply become the slums of the future. Most of the rest will be salvage or ruins.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
I believe most of suburbia is unreformable and will not be fixed.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
Suburbia is the insidious cartoon of the country house in a cartoon of the country.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
America does not want change, except from the cash register at Wal-Mart.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
I'm serenely convinced that we are heading into what will amount to a time out from technological progress as we know it.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
When a society is stressed, when it comes up against things that are hard to understand, you get a lot of delusional thinking.
James Howard Kunstler
Image
I think we'll see a leveling off and then a contraction of population, not a continued upward trend.
James Howard Kunstler