Between the Ocean and New Jersey

Sunset on the Hudson

"You'd think New York people was all wise; but no, they can't get a chance to learn. Every thing's too compressed. Even the hay-seeds are bailed hay-seeds. But what else can you expect from a town that's shut off for the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the other?"
O. Henry, A Tempered Wind. Collected Works of O. Henry

Heaven of a Certain Man

"New York, indeed, is the heaven of every variety of man with something useless and expensive to sell."
H.L. Mencken, A Second Mencken Chrestomathy: A New Selection from the Writings of America's Legendary Editor, Critic, and Wit (Maryland Paperback Bookshelf)

Convergence

Skybridge between Met Life Tower and Metropolitan North Building

"New York is the focus, the point where American and European interests converge."
Margaret Fuller, The Spirit Leads: Margaret Fuller in Her Own Words

NY Culture

Columbia University

"In New York the opportunities for learning, and acquiring a culture that shall not come out of the ruins, but belong to life, are probably greater than anywhere else in the world."
Thomas Wolfe, Of Time and the River: A Legend of Man's Hunger in His Youth (Scribner Classics)

(Not) Mecca

Lincoln Center

"Forty square blocks bounded by Lincoln Center on the west and Cinema II on the east is not the center of the goddamn universe. I grant you it's an exciting, vibrant, stimulating, fabulous city, but it's not Mecca... It just smells like it."
William Warren, California Suite (by Neil Simon)

At Least Once

Fifth Avenue and Harlem Meer

"Everyone should live in New York at least once."
Danielle Ganek, The Summer We Read Gatsby: A Novel

An Open Sewer

Union Rat on Second Avenue

"This city here is like an open sewer, ya know; it's full of filth and scum."
Travis Brickle, Taxi Driver

Wild Promise

"The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world."
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Sodom and Gomorrah

Eighth Avenue

"New York makes one think of the collapse of civilization, about Sodom and Gomorrah, the end of the world. The end wouldn't come as a surprise here. Many people already bank on it."
Saul Bellow, Mr. Sammler's Planet

Dear Old Town

Lafayette Street 

"Can you wonder I'm gloomy?
Can you smile when I frown?
I miss the East Side, the West Side
The North Side and the South Side
So take me back to Manhattan
That dear old dirty town."
Cole Porter, "Take Me Back to Manhattan," New York: Songs of the City

A Beautiful Catastrophe

Morningside Avenue

"A hundred times I have thought: New York is a catastrophe, and fifty times: it is a beautiful catastrophe."
Le Corbusier, When the Cathedrals Were White (McGraw-Hill Paperbacks)

Jaywalking

West 50th

"The art of living in New York City lies in crossing the street against the lights."
Anatole Broyard, Kafka Was the Rage

An Organism in Itself

Central Park West

"It isn't like the rest of the country --it is like a nation itself-- more tolerant than the rest in a curious way. Littleness gets swallowed up here. All the viciousness that makes other cities vicious is sucked up and absorbed in New York. It is truly the great city of the world --an organism in itself-- neither good nor bad but unique."
John Steinbeck. Steinbeck: A Life in Letters

NY vs LA

Long Island City

"When its 100 degrees in New York, it's 72 in Los Angeles. When its 30 degrees in New York, in Los Angeles it's still 72. However, there are 6 million interesting people in New York, and 72 in Los Angeles."
Neil Simon, interview on Playboy Magazine

If I Can Make it There...Bri

Brill Building

"If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere,
It's up to you, New York, New York."
Fred Ebb, Lyrics from New York, New York
.

A Hellhole

"New York is a hellhole. And you know how I feel about hellholes!"
Homer Simpson. The Simpsons

A Little Dance

Midtown Manhattan

"Even the vegetables in New York are better. It’s not just the vegetables, of course. I look out the window and I see the lights and the skyline and the people on the street rushing around looking for action, love, and the world’s greatest chocolate chip cookie, and my heart does a little dance."
Nora Ephron, Heartburn

Communist Pornographers

Lenin Statue at Red Square

"Don't you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here."
Alvy Singer (Woody Allen), Annie Hall

The One

Romeo and Juliet Statue

"If you can only have one great love, then the city just may be mine. And I don't want nobody talkin' shit about my boyfriend."
Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), Sex and the City

Insane with Restlessness

Times Square

"New York has a trip-hammer vitality which drives you insane with restlessness, if you have no inner stabilizer."
Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi

In Love with New York

World Financial Center Plaza

"I was in love with New York. I do not mean 'love' in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and never love anyone quite that way again."
Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays (FSG Classics)

Willing to Be Lucky

Columbus Circle

"New York. It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill them, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky."
E.B. White, Here is New York