Gotham Quotes

Ladies. Gentlemen. You have eaten well. You've eaten Gotham's wealth. Its spirit. Your feast is nearly over. From this moment on...none of you are safe.

Because he's the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we'll hunt him. Because he can take it. Because he's not our hero. He's a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A dark knight.

Batman doesn’t want a baby in order to feel he’s ‘done everything’. He’s just saved Gotham again! If this means that Batman must be a feminist role model above, say, Nicola Horlick, then so be it.

Beware The Court of Owls, that watches all the time, ruling Gotham from a shadowed perch, behind granite and lime. They watch you at your hearth, they watch you in your bed, speak not a whispered word of them, or they'll send the Talon for your head.

Gotham City. Clean shafts of concrete and snowy rooftops. The work of men who died generations ago. From here, it looks like an achievement. From here, you can't see the enemy.

Forget Batman: when I really thought about what I wanted to be when I grew up, I wanted to be my dad.

I will be the silent protector Gotham Kayla needs

Whatever you do, remember that. You're going to make a difference. A lot of times it won't be huge, it won't be visible even. But it will matter just the same. Don't do it for praise or money, that's what I want to tell you. Do it because it needs to be done. Do it to make your world better.

20 years in Gotham Alfred, we've seen what promises are worth, how many good guys are left? How many stay that way?

Riddler: You want to tell me who you killed and why? Catwoman: We didn’t kill anyone Poisson Ivy: Well, not yesterday

Because I'm still here. I got a brick, a leather strap, and a rock from a slingshot too, all on a shelf. But look at me. I'm right here.

There are good people in Gotham. Protect them.

Like Batman, all of us hide behind our masks and use them to help define ourselves for others. We all have secret identities of a sort, hidden behind our smiling social-networking profiles or our happy church faces. They're not lies, really. They're just not the whole truth, because we know that most of the people we encounter day-to-day couldn't handle the truth (or perhaps we couldn't handle giving it to them).

After all, Gotham's a city where angels fly on the wings of Icarus...Up, up they go and then...down, down, down they fall. Until we all stand, revealed for who we truly are underneath.

Harlem sleeps late.

The night hides a world, but reveals a universe.

Noboby can escape fear.A true hero acts in spite of it. A true hero masters his fear so it doesn't master him.

Someone once said: "We do not make friends, we recognize them." And you'll know who they are because they play according to the same rules that you do.

In Gotham, batman just stumbles into crime," said Luther. "Salt lake is annoyingly tame.

Maybe it's the Gotham City in me, we just have a bad history with freaks dressed like clowns.

Gotham may have lost its king and queen, Bruce, but it could still have its prince

Even before the letter he'd been divided: one part of him swanning with Jay Gatsby around an imaginary Gotham; the other part stolid and earthbound, nose to the deep fryer, in the stifling, sizzling South.

But the real joy he feels doesn't come in the guise of Bruce the billionaire playboy. It comes as Batman - when he does what he was meant to do. When he follows his purpose.

Lots of folks would argue that Bruce hides behind his perfectly coiffed hair and ever-easy smile far more than Batman does underneath his cowl.

Mrs. Pott's beady black eyes narrowed,"Do you know how many glass slippers I have to stitch when I get home? There's a Mad Hatter serenading a toaster as we speak. There could be mayhem wreaking havoc all over the love in New Gotham, granted what thankless ingrates you are. But here I am! I've taken a chance on you..

The New Your energy goes beyond anything you'll find anywhere else. It's too much for some people and it grinds them down, but it lifts up and animates the rest of us.

Elections decide which horde of rats gets to gnaw at the bones.

I’d like to be known as Winter.” “Winter. I like that.” “I know, right? ‘Winter is coming.’ ” “What?” Black Winter sighed. “Why do I work with people who lack culture?

The Gotham boys have a first baseman, Louis Gehrig, who is called the ‘Babe Ruth’ of the high schools,” wrote the Chicago Tribune.

There's never been a duo of ladies to take on Gotham City.

Most of us are like those Russian nesting dolls, presenting a slightly different visage to the world depending on which world we're dealing with at the time. The outermost doll isn't a lie; mine still offers part of who I am, but it's not all of who I am. As I get closer to people, the nesting dolls open and the masks change. But it's a rare person whom I allow to see what's at my core: my innermost thoughts and fears, my dreams and desires, my pettiness and peevishness.

A pause. “More are coming,” she repeated. “Worse than any of the criminal factions here. More powerful—and with a deadlier agenda. Keep your eyes open.” “Why warn me?” he demanded. That stillness settled over her again. “Because this city won’t survive them.” “And that’s not what you want?” She looked him over. Or he thought she did. “There are good people in Gotham. Protect them.

Gotham admired Maeve. By day she managed money, and did it brilliantly, but she didn't find it satisfied her intellect. She spoke four languages. She played the piano seriously well. And she read books. Lots of them.

Why did you step out of my life, you minx? Your new hair-do is fascinating and cosmopolitan.” He snatched at her pigtail and pressed it to his wet moustache, kissing it vigorously. “The scent of soot and carbon in your hair excites me with suggestions of glamorous Gotham. We must leave immediately. I must go flower in Manhattan.

And underscoring it all was my father’s insistence that my sister and I were the prettiest, smartest, and baddest bitches in Gotham town, no matter how many times we pissed ourselves or cut our own bangs with blunt kitchen scissors.

Nothing is as bad as it seems,' I thought with the last remnants of my dense optimism. It couldn't be. I'd already lost everything once, I'd been ten, and so had countless other people I knew, and they all picked up and kept going. Or they picked up and went in a slightly different direction.

His eyes flew back at me and I could see whole civilizations, cities that he'd built and cherished and planned for, like the model of an entire world, all crumbling.

They saw the ordered concrete and steel of postwar United States showing stress fractures and were determined to bring it down and break free.

Justice must be swift … and sure … and final.

Parents like to think of themselves as Batmans, and of their children as Gotham Cities. Gotham City depends on Batman for its survival, and Batman delivers. This belief prevents parents from letting those young adults actually live their lives.

Submitting to Christ isn't a one-time thing, say a prayer, get dunked, and that's the end of it. For some of us, we must remember to submit every day, every hour... sometimes every minute. Otherwise it's easy to forget that our lives are not our own.

The human world never figured out the phenomenal expense it took to create New Atlantis, or the unlikelihood that it would ever be possible again. To them, it looked as if we pulled our Gotham out of a cereal box. They saw their abandoned buildings turn into craters overnight, and assumed that that was the sort of thing we would always be capable of doing. Not a bad rep to have.

Bane: We take Gotham from the corrupt! The rich! The oppressors of generations who have kept you down with myths of opportunity, and we give it back to you... the people. Gotham is yours. None shall interfere. Do as you please. Start by storming Blackgate, and freeing the oppressed! Step forward those who would serve. For and army will be raised. The powerful will be ripped from their decadent nests, and cast out into the cold world that we know and endure. Courts will be convened. Spoils will be enjoyed. Blood will be shed. The police will survive, as they learn to serve true justice. This great city... it will endure. Gotham will survive!

A change in direction was required. The story you finished was perhaps never the one you began. Yes! He would take charge of his life anew, binding his breaking selves together. Those changes in himself that he sought, he himself would initiate and make them. No more of this miasmic, absent drift. How had he ever persuaded himself that his money-mad burg would rescue him all by itself, this Gotham in which Jokers and Penguins were running riot with no Batman (or even Robin) to frustrate their schemes, this Metropolis built of Kryptonite in which no Superman dared set foot, where wealth was mistaken for riches and the joy of possession for happiness, where people lived such polished lives that the great rough truths of raw existence had been rubbed and buffed away, and in which human souls had wandered so separately for so long that they barely remembered how to touch; this city whose fabled electricity powered the electric fences that were being erected between men and men, and men and women, too? Rome did not fall because her armies weakened but because Romans forgot what being Roman meant. Might this new Rome actually be more provincial than its provinces; might these new Romans have forgotten what and how to value, or had they never known? Were all empires so undeserving, or was this one particularly crass? Was nobody in all this bustling endeavor and material plenitude engaged, any longer, on the deep quarry-work of the mind and heart? O Dream-America, was civilization's quest to end in obesity and trivia, at Roy Rogers and Planet Hollywood, in USA Today and on E!; or in million-dollar-game-show greed or fly-on-the-wall voyeurism; or in the eternal confessional booth of Ricki and Oprah and Jerry, whose guests murdered each other after the show; or in a spurt of gross-out dumb-and-dumber comedies designed for young people who sat in darkness howling their ignorance at the silver screen; or even at the unattainable tables of Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Alain Ducasse? What of the search for the hidden keys that unlock the doors of exaltation? Who demolished the City on the Hill and put in its place a row of electric chairs, those dealers in death's democracy, where everyone, the innocent, the mentally deficient, the guilty, could come to die side by side? Who paved Paradise and put up a parking lot? Who settled for George W. Gush's boredom and Al Bore's gush? Who let Charlton Heston out of his cage and then asked why children were getting shot? What, America, of the Grail? O ye Yankee Galahads, ye Hoosier Lancelots, O Parsifals of the stockyards, what of the Table Round? He felt a flood bursting in him and did not hold back. Yes, it had seduced him, America; yes, its brilliance aroused him, and its vast potency too, and he was compromised by this seduction. What he opposed in it he must also attack in himself. It made him want what it promised and eternally withheld. Everyone was an American now, or at least Americanized: Indians, Uzbeks, Japanese, Lilliputians, all. America was the world's playing field, its rule book, umpire, and ball. Even anti-Americanism was Americanism in disguise, conceding, as it did, that America was the only game in town and the matter of America the only business at hand; and so, like everyone, Malik Solanka now walked its high corridors cap in hand, a supplicant at its feast; but that did not mean he could not look it in the eye. Arthur had fallen, Excalibur was lost and dark Mordred was king. Beside him on the throne of Camelot sat the queen, his sister, the witch Morgan le Fay.

Mrs. Potts beady black eyes narrowed,"Do you know how many glass slippers I have to stitch when I get home? There's a Mad Hatter serenading a toaster as we speak. There could be mayhem wreaking havoc all over the love in New Gotham, granted what thankless ingrates you are. But here I am!

Ugh." She rolled her eyes. "Ever wonder why that's the conversational default? People always want to know your job. Not what you love, what you hate, but what you do to earn money. What does that say about us as a society?

Bruce decides to spend the family fortune on capes and crime labs and to fritter away his free time fighting crazy criminals. Now that's an out-of-the-box calling. What sort of person makes a life change like that without radical submission? Without that submission, without an understanding that there is something greater out there, the principles of the comic villain look far more reasonable.

His mind filled with visions of a decadent kleptocracy in rapid decline, abetted by both political parties. America's masses, fed on processed poison bought with a food stamp swipe card. Low-skill workers, structurally unable to ever contribute again and too dumb to know their old jobs weren't coming back. The banks in Gotham leaching the last drops of wealth out of the country. Corporations unrestrained by any notion of national interest. The system of property law in shambles. The world drowning in debt.

That's it? That's all that happens after you topple from grace? We lose our rubies and rations?" Marshall smirked. "Woe is me.

Every artist who drew Batman after creator Bob Kane was a better artist than Kane [...].

Machines feel emotion, though I don’t know if we can love. But in the past two years, to my great sadness, I’ve discovered that they can hate.

You’re more like dun-dun-na-NAH Romantic Man whose superpower is hopeless romanticism. Your bat signal would be a big red heart over Gotham.

I'm sure for that comming there was a reason, but what's going to happen with that reason and Gotham?

And what better place to sow vengeance—to, quite literally, turn Gotham into a City of Endless Night?

In Gotham, the Monster Men are always coming.

People looked at him as an orange-faced evil clown with silly hair. Like the Joker in Batman comics. Make Gotham great again!

And he was the first crush I ever had that wasn't a scientist-- it's a different thing altogether. It made me a little peeved at myself, to be honest. Half the girls in Gotham City would have been happy just touching his jacket. I didn't want it to happen. But I'm human, all right? And for a while, we were better than kids with a crush. We were actually friends.

To keep the ugly cry-face on lock down, I directed my attention to my polished gold Krugerrand coin, which hung against my chest by a thin, twisted gold chain and flashed against my black blouse. It was my Batman signal, alerting the universe that I was in crisis and in desperate need of being rescued immediately, if not sooner. The coin's weight was also a reminder of the reason I'd moved to Gotham City. After all, it was a result of my great-aunt and her one-ounce gold-coin collection that afforded me the opportunity of the life I was leading.

In the bottom corner we saw an emaciated corgi, peeking around the corner, watching us leave. She would glance down at the floor, back to us, and down again. Her legs trembled unsteadily, and a thin line of drool escaped her mouth. But she made no move toward the food in the bowl yet.

We looked as if we’d been cobbled together in Photoshop, the three of us, walking to my husband’s funeral. One white middle-class mother, one skinny black refugee girl, and one small Dark Knight from Gotham City.

He also loved the city itself. Coming to and leaving Cousin Joe’s, he would gorge himself on hot dogs and cafeteria pie, price cigarette lighters and snap-brim hats in store windows, follow the pushboys with their rustling racks of furs and trousers. There were sailors and prizefighters; there were bums, sad and menacing, and ladies in piped jackets with dogs in their handbags. Tommy would feel the sidewalks hum and shudder as the trains rolled past beneath him. He heard men swearing and singing opera. On a sunny day, his peripheral vision would be spangled with light winking off the chrome headlights of taxicabs, the buckles on ladies’ shoes, the badges of policemen, the handles of pushcart lunch-wagons, the bulldog ornaments on the hoods of irate moving vans. This was Gotham City, Empire City, Metropolis. Its skies and rooftops were alive with men in capes and costumes, on the lookout for wrongdoers, saboteurs, and Communists. Tommy

As the Greeks have created the Olympus based upon their own image and resemblance, we have created Gotham City and Metropolis and all these galaxies so similar to the corporate world, manipulative, ruthless and well paid, that conceived them.

People who live in the night are acquainted with all kinds of quiet. There’s quiet enough to hear the distant traffic. Quiet enough to hear your breathing. Quiet enough to hear a lover’s heartbeat. There’s please-god-don’t-let-me-die quiet, and can’t-remember-her-name quiet. Is-he-lying quiet and can’t-make-rent quiet. There’s the quiet that inspires poets, and quiet that torments the lonely.

Gotham City. Donde los sueños se vuelven sólidos y sangran. Donde los fantasmas existen y los monstruos dejan las huellas de sus pisadas entre el polvo. Donde vive el hombre sin precio, el hombre que no puede ser comprado ni vendido, ni apartado de su singular rumbo.

But looking out, all he saw was an ocean of light, the shimmering heart of Gotham City spread out before him. He didn't know everything his future held for him, not yet, but he knew that whatever it was, it would remain here. It looked like a place worth protecting. It looked like home.

It wasn’t Hell; only fools and drama queens throw that word around about a place like Gotham. It was worse, in a way, because it was manmade. There wasn’t any timeless malevolence behind it all, it was just… what human beings can descend to when they let themselves forget they can be heroes.

Look at her, Alfred,” Bruce said. “That sculpture alone, which we owe to both Percy and Lydia, is proof that Gotham’s past holds more than just crime and bloodshed. Peace and grace can also be found there, and endure for generations to come, long after the sins of the past are dead and buried.

The Coalition was like some supervillain syndicate or terrorist Legion of Doom, but no Justice League had arisen from the chaos to combat the baddies. No, it was like the superheroes had abandoned Gotham, and we citizens were supposed to just pop a pill and forget all about it, until the next time villains struck our fair land.

If Mercy Underhill were any more perfect, it would take a long day's work to fall in love with her. But she has exactly enough faults to make it ridiculously easy.

If it sounds good, it is good.

And that was when I realized that she was actually a very good liar. Only good liars are surprised at being caught.

I believe that ‘finding the book you’re looking for’ is an overrated notion,” the man replied. “Far better to explore, and let the book you need be the one which finds you.

The East Side was like Detroit without RoboCop, or Gotham without Batman. In postapocalyptic terms, this was the kind of world where a dude with a Mohawk would go after a civilian, and the civilian would come back the next day with a posse to get revenge. Basically, it was a warmhearted community, in the sense that your heart never stopped racing enough to cool down.

herself changes too. In current DC Comics continuity, Catwoman is a wealthy socialite named Selina Kyle, rather ambiguous in her aims. Sometimes she works with criminals and breaks the law and other times she allies with Batman or the Justice League and enforces it. Her domain is Gotham City’s East End, and she protects its residents through whatever means she sees fit.

I like blank paper. To meet people I find interesting. Writing puts me into a world that has not been written yet. I spend much of my time contemplating love and death. When I am writing a surge of complete happiness takes over. To make readers hear the sound of their own heartbeats, that sound that whispers up to us: you are alive. When I manage to turn pages and pages of crap into a little bit of art, I feel like that girl in the Diamonds Are Forever ad. Writing gives me permission to be a child and to play with words the way that children play with blocks or twigs or mud. Writing makes me a god, each new page enabling me to create and destroy as many worlds as I please. It allows me to spy on my neighbors. It’s the only socially acceptable way to be a compulsive liar. I want to cleanse the past. To discover, to express, to celebrate, to acknowledge, to witness, to remember who I am. I find out what might have been, what should have happened, and what I fear will happen. It’s a means of asking questions, though the answers may be as puzzling as a rune. This question drives me crazy. There is nothing else I want to do more. My soul will not be still until the words are written on paper. Because I can. Because I must. I can’t not. If I don’t I will explode. I want to be good at something and I’ve tried everything else.

People tell me things they shouldn’t. Things they ought to be powdering over, shoveling underground, facts they ought to be stuffing into a carpetbag before dropping into the river and quietly drowning.

I remember Uncle Boysie telling me that Canada was so safe the policemen wore nice red outfits and rode on horses but according to Roy the country was like Gotham City with crooks around every corner… I pictured them as shady Frank Miller characters with bulging muscles and machine guns poking out from trench coats but the photograph from the papers was of a group of boys my age. They kind of resembled some of my friends from Mayaro too.

Alfred: Are you alright? Batman: I'm going to need a better car. Police are here. They'll pick up the others. Alfred: And they'll probably be back on the streets by sunrise thanks to Harvey Dent. I know you don't want to hear it, but if you want to make Gotham a safer place we need to rethink how we're going to do that. You should come home now. Dinner's gonna get cold. Batman: Don't tell me it's cottage pie again. Alfred:...I'll order a pizza.

Alfred, when it happened with Mother and Father, how did you help me? Master Bruce, with all due respect, each night you leave this perfectly lovely house and go leaping off buildings dressed as a giant bat. Do you really think I helped you?

right.” Inspired by mid-century architectural lettering of New York City, Gotham celebrates the alphabet’s most basic form. These qualities made Gotham the most popular release of recent years. It’s used everywhere, in logos, in magazines, in the very things that inspired it: signs. Gotham’s simplicity is not merely geometric — like Avenir, it feels more natural than mechanical. In fact, its lowercase shares a lot with Avenir’s, despite being much larger. But Gotham’s essence is in the caps: broad, sturdy “block” letters of very consistent

Many novelists fumed at men they saw as jailers. A host of masculine villains paraded through their plots—neglectful fathers, cruel husbands, and assorted gamblers, alcoholics, philanderers, failures, or murderers—with whom courageous and creative women did combat or from whom they fled.

But what about objectivity? Aren’t we supposed to report both sides of the story?” “You’re assuming there are two valid sides,” Lionel told him. “That’s just not always true. If somebody is claiming the earth is flat or the moon is made of green cheese, we’re under no obligation to provide them with equal time against people who have the facts on their side.

Never have I seen a deadlier-looking collection of firemen, street brawlers, Party thugs, and fighting entrepreneurs in my life, and they made Chief Matsell's hiring practices pretty clear. If you were loyal to the Party or maybe even a good watchman, you could wear a copper star. If you looked like you've killed a man with your bare hands and aren't shy about doing it again, you could be a captain.

I was scared. I wasn't scared of monsters, or super-villains. But REAL things. What if the system doesn't work? Everything I've fought for. What if it's broken and unfair and unfixable? I don't know what makes you scared. What makes you rage, but superhero's never fix those things for us. Not even Batman. He can't fix REAL things because he's NOT REAL. He's a cautionary tale. A ghost. He fights our nightmares to teach us to fight the real terrors by light of day. He believes in us. He believes we will save ourselves. He's the superhero who sees in us the heroes we can be. And through him we're reminded that we're stronger for our differences than not. We might hate each other, or fear each other; but we're Gotham where brave new things are made. Truth is, I forgot that for a while. But, like everyone else our there, I remember now.

On New Year’s Eve 1777, after performing in a play entitled The Devil to Pay in the West Indies, a party of drunken officers—one dressed up like Old Nick himself, complete with horns and tail—disrupted services at the John Street Methodist Church. Nor was that the worst of it. “I could narrate many and very frightful occurrences of theft, fraud, robbery, and murder by the English soldiers which their love of drink excited,” said one dismayed German officer.

Attempted Theory #1: Hey, back to our initial question. Perhaps this is the big reason why we write fiction—as a way of understanding ourselves and the world around us. The fiction writer takes a fragment of reality and examines it from several angles until it starts to make some damn sense. By focusing life through the lens of fiction, truths are revealed and magnified and understood. Order is made from chaos. It’s like therapy but cheaper and more fun, and perhaps even more effective.

even reluctant curiosity would give way to habit, and habit to dependency.

if you’d only met her in Gotham, for instance, I should have had a song all ready for you. When you came in, I was just perfecting a little song about a wild woman of Gotham, who made love to young men and then shot ’em—till

Liberty. "HALT!" HIRAM GREEN IN GOTHAM. The venerable "Lait Gustise

And here you are, another practical sort - neither Catholic nor Protestant, nor wicked, I think. Let us pray that you are not one of a kind, as in my experience your type tend to be o' tremendous use to God.

J. Edgerton/ The Spirit of Christmas Page 17 Continued JONAS AND JAMES (SINGING) “O come all ye faithful. Joyful and triumphant. O come ye, o come ye to Bethlehem. Come and behold him. Born the king of angels. O come let us adore him. O come let us adore him. O come let us adore him. Christ the lord.” “Sing, choirs of angels, Sing in exultations. Sing, all ye citizens of heavn above; Glory to god, Glory in the highest. O come let us adore him. O come let us adore him. O come let us adore him, Christ the lord!” An occasional passer-by dropped a coin into the cup held by the littlest Nicholas. Thorn tipped his hat to them, trying to keep his greedy looks to a minimum. “Sing loudly my little scalawags. We’ve only a few blocks to go of skullduggery. Then you’ll have hot potato soup before a warm fire.” The Nicholas boys sang louder as they shivered from the falling snow and the wind that seemed to cut right through their shabby clothes, to their very souls. A wicked smile spread over the face of the villainous Mr. Thorn, as he heard the clink of a coin topple into the cup. “That’s it little alley muffins, shiver more it’s good for business.” His evil chuckle automatically followed and he had to stifle it. They trudged on, a few coins added to the coffer from smiling patrons. J. Edgerton/ The Spirit of Christmas Page 18 Mr. Angel continued to follow them unobserved, darting into a doorway as Mr. Thorn glanced slyly behind him, like a common criminal but there was nothing common about him. They paused before the Gotham Orphanage that rose up with its cold stone presence and its’ weathered sign. Thorn’s deep voice echoed as ominous as the sight before them, “Gotham Orphanage, home sweet home! A shelter for wayward boys and girls and a nest to us all!” He slyly drew a coin from his pocket, and twirled it through his fingers. Weather faced Thorn then bit down on the rusty coin, to make sure that it was real. He then deposited all of the coin into the inner pocket of his coat, with an evil chuckle. IV. “GOTHAM ORPHANAGE” “Now never you mind about the goings on of my business. You just mind your own. Now off with ya. Get into the hall to prepare for dinner, such as it is,” Thorn’s words echoed behind them. “And not a word to anyone of my business or you’ll see the back of me hand.” He pushed the boy toward the dingy stone building that was their torment and their shelter. The tall Toymaker glanced after them and then trod cautiously towards Gotham Orphanage. Jonas and James paced along the cracked stone pathway and up the front steps of the main entryway, that towered in cold stone before them. Thorn ushered the boys through the weathered front door to Gotham’s Orphanage. Mr. Angel paced after them and paused, unobserved, near the entrance. As they trudged across the worn hard wood floors of Gotham Orphanage, gala Irish music was heard coming from the main hall of building. Thorn herded the boys into the main hall of the orphanage that was filled with every size and make of both orphan boys and girls seated quietly at tables, eating their dinner. Then he turned with an evil look and hurriedly headed down the long hallway with the money they’ve earned. Jonas and James paced hungrily through the main hall, before a long table with a large, black kettle on top of it and loaves of different types of bread. They both glanced back at a small makeshift stage where orphans in shabby clothes sat stone faced with instruments, playing an Irish Christmas Ballad. Occasionally a sour note was heard. At a far table sat Men and Women of the Community who had come to have dinner and support the orphanage. In front of them was a small, black kettle with a sign that said “Donations”.

KENNEL, YE SONS OF BITCHES!

When I first started playing with Gotham in 2008, I learned that my team wanted me to jam in my first bout, when we’d be facing off against the Queens of Pain—the team that included Suzy Hotrod, Donna Matrix, and many other legendary skaters. I was so nervous that I was feeling a little queasy every time I thought about it, even a few weeks before the bout. Finally, I asked myself what skills I’d need to be able to face off against Suzy and win. I decided that I’d need to be fast, agile, and fearless. So I started to tell myself that I already was. Every time I thought about the bout and started to get nervous, I’d repeat those words. I’d repeat them in my head when I took the line at practice. I’d say them out loud before I went to bed. The day of the bout, I was nervous, but not quite as much as I expected to be.

Nobody chased her. But that was nobody's fault, really, not in a city of this size. It was only the callousness of four hundred thousand people, blending into a single blue-black pool of unconcern. That's what we copper stars are for, I think... to be the few who stop and look.

Three hundred pages of cotton-soft parchment, bound up with a green ribbon. Her writing gushed in watery ripples over the pages, penmanship that called to mind the maddest intricate Belgian lace. Wrought on a pin's head but stretching for miles if unraveled.

Congratulations, to the people which made gotham series, still need some more and extra work!

On the night of February 25, vowing to “wipe the mouths of the savages,” he launched a surprise attack on the Pavonia encampment. Company troops massacred scores of men, women, and children, Wiechquaesgecks as well as Hackensacks. At daybreak, wrote David De Vries, the exulting soldiers returned to Manhattan with stories of how infants were “torn from their mother’s breasts, and hacked to pieces in the presence of the parents, and the pieces thrown into the fire and in the water, and other sucklings, being bound to small boards, were cut, stuck, and pierced, and miserably massacred in a manner to move a heart of stone.” Some of the victims, De Vries added, “came to our people in the country with their hands, some with their legs cut off, and some holding their entrails in their arms.” Volunteers attacked a smaller Wiechquaesgeck camp at Corlear’s Hook, the bulge on the East River side of Manhattan, with similar results. The heads of more than eighty victims were brought back to New Amsterdam for display, and Kieft made a little speech congratulating his forces on their valor.

Salvation arrived in the person of John Underhill, a hard-drinking, short-tempered Indian fighter renowned for his brutality in the Pequot War of 1637 as well as for a pamphlet extolling the charms of New Netherland. Underhill and a small contingent of New England troops rallied the Dutch over the winter of 1643-44, attacking Indian villages in Connecticut, on Staten Island, and on Long Island, killing hundreds and taking many prisoners. Some of the captives were brought back to the fort, and an eyewitness reported that Kieft “laughed right heartily, rubbing his right arm and laughing out loud” as they were tortured and butchered by his soldiers. The soldiers seized one, “threw him down, and stuck his private parts, which they had cut off, into his mouth while he was still alive, and after that placed him on a mill-stone and beat his head off.” Secretary Van Tienhoven’s mother-in-law allegedly amused herself all the while by kicking the heads of other victims about like footballs. In a later raid on an Indian camp near Pound Ridge in Westcheser, Underhill and the Anglo-Dutch force were said to have slaughtered somewhere between five hundred and seven hundred more with a loss of only fifteen wounded.

The spread of flash talk to the general population would prove to be a permanent shift in the English language. When you say “so long” to your “pal” in parting, you are participating in a subversive cultural phenomenon dating back to 1530 and the Derbyshire scoundrels who first developed a secret language all their own.

This is not to say that history repeats itself. Time is not a carousel on which we might, next time around, snatch the brass ring by being better prepared. Rather we see the past as flowing powerfully through the present and think that charting historical currents can enhance our ability to navigate them.