Every Ten Years

West 41st

"The whole of New York is rebuilt about once in ten years."
Philip Hone, The Diary Of Philip Hone

Intellectual Life

Rose Main Reading Room

"The intellectual life is why I am a New Yorker. It's why I stay here. I spend my summers in Europe and when they ask me if I'm an American, I say, 'No, I'm a New Yorker.' I don't know about everyone else, but for me that's a positive statement."
Alexander Alland, Jr, quoted in New York Times World of New York

Courage and Enthusiasm

Broadway

"New York has such courage and enthusiasm that everything can be begun again, sent back to the building yard and made into something still greater, something mastered!"
Le Corbusier, When the Cathedrals Were White

Any Way You Look at It

East River Park

"New York is easily recognizable as the greatest city in the world, view it any way and every way - back, belly and sides."
Brendan Behan, Brendan Behan's New York

Essentially National

West 109th

"New York is essentially national in interests, position, and pursuits. No one thinks of the place as belonging to a particular State, but to the United States. "
James Fenimore Cooper, New York

No Mosquitoes

Harlem Meer

"You know what I like about Manhattan? No mosquitoes."
Frank Costanza, Seinfeld

Vulgar Fortunes

The Trump World Tower

"Money is made easily by many in New York; fortunes are acquired in a day; families go from a shanty on a back street to a brown-stone front in upper New York, but they carry with them their vulgar habits, and disgust those who from social position are compelled to invite them to their houses. "
Matthew Hale Smith, Sunshine and Shadow in New York

Ideas Matter

Columbia University

"Ideas matter in New York. I am certain that more conversations in New York are about ideas than anywhere else. Not just vague theories, but ideas that New Yorkers have the will, and the clout, to do something about."
David Frost, World of New York

Infinite Library

NYPL in Morningside Heights

"New York is like an infinite library, with everyone you ever wanted to meet tucked in a little room."
Jerry Weintraub, When I Stop Talking, You'll Know I'm Dead

No Castle

"If the adage is true that a man's home is his castle, then the moats of Manhattan's dwellings are no bigger than a carpeted hallway."
Steven Gaines, The Sky's the Limit

Electricity and Machinery

Midtown West

"That frightful cyclone of electricity and machinery called New York."
Lafcadio Hearn, The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn

Aloof and Indiferent

Winter Garden

"A splendid place is this New York; splendid but terrible... It overwhelms with its lavish display of wealth, it stuns with its tireless, battering energy. But it stays aloof, indifferent it if loved or hated; if it crush or sustain."
Harry Leon Wilson, The Spenders

Magical Powers

Empire State Building

"And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban nights are like the nights there. I have looked down across the city from high windows. It is then that the great buildings lose reality and take on magical powers."

Ezra Pound, Ezra Pound - American Writers 26

Melting Pot of Europe

West Village

"If New York was the melting pot of Europe, Los Angeles was the melting pot of the United States. "
John Gregory Dunne, Regards: The Selected Nonfiction of John Gregory Dunne

Sidewalk Privacy

"New York City is a place where one can weep on the sidewalk in perfect privacy."
William Maxwell, A William Maxwell Portrait

Not for the Defeated

Escalator in Penn Station

"New York is not a city to return to in defeat."
Moss Hart, Act One

Insensate Village Pride

Rose Hill

"As the late Fred Allen used to say -- 'everywhere outside New York City is Bridgeport, Connecticut.' This parochialism is common in all the big cities of the East, but in New York City it amounts to a kind of insensate village pride."
Alistair Cooke, Alistair Cooke's America

Regards to Broadway

George M. Cohan statue

"Give my regards to Broadway,  remember me to Herald Square,
Tell all the gang at Forty-Second Street that I will soon be there;
Whisper of how I'm yearning to mingle with the old time throng;
Give my regards to old Broadway and say that I'll be there e'er long."
George M. Cohan, Give My Regards to Broadway

How to Succeed in Hollywood

Neil Simon Theatre

"If you want to be a success in Hollywood, be sure to go to New York."
Bert Lahr, quoted in Notes on a Cowardly Lion

The Opposite of a Vacation

Tenth Avenue

"Visiting New York was the opposite of a vacation. It didn't put you at ease -- it put you on guard."
Omar Tyree, Diary of a Groupie

Naked in the Snow

"Manhattan could invite you in, but it could just as easily leave you naked in the snow and notice nothing until you had become a statue of death."
Stanley Crouch, Don't the Moon Look Lonesome

Dada

Lexington Avenue Armory

"Dada cannot live in New York. All New York is dada, and will not tolerate a rival."
Man Ray, Making Mischief

Elephants

Peter Woytuk art in Columbus Circle

"If you thought about it, there was nothing more New York than elephants, gray and smart, weathered but resistant. With a giant trunk that throws dirt at people."
Jennifer Belle, Little Stalker

Stone Desert

Flatiron Plaza

"New York is the great stone desert."
Israel Zangwill, The melting-Pot

A Magnet for Hopes and Dreams

Times Square Wishing Wall

"New York is a magnet for hopes and dreams, as well as a port where people who once had those dreams still hang around."
Jane Campion, Jane Campion

Seedy

Broadway

"Broadway looked seedy, like a slovenly woman just out of bed."
Charlie Chaplin, My Autobiography

New York Money

Fifth Avenue

"I have never walked down Fifth Avenue alone without thinking of money. I have never walked there with a companion without talking of it."
Anthony Trollope, North America

Metaphoric Home

Brooklyn Bridge Park

"Brooklyn is the metaphoric home to anyone who has ever seen himself as an outsider, who has ever been torn between the powerful, atavistic tug toward the traditional and familiar and the magnetic allure of the unknown."
Donald Margulies, Brooklyn Boy

It Springs from Money

Woolworth Building

"There is little in New York that does not spring from money. It is not a town of ideas; it is not even a town of causes. But what issues out of money is often extremely brilliant."
H. L. Mencken, A Second Mencken Chrestomathy

No Place is Good Enough

"This is a very New York think I'm doing, being discontent with where I am. It it a very New York look I have on my face, this scowl. In the city night, someone is always complaining about where they are, wanting to leave, head someplace else. This place sucks, let's go, this place sucks, too, let's go, everywhere sucks, let's go. No place is ever good enough."
Taylor Plimpton, Notes from the Night

Sky with Eight Million Stars

Hayden Planetarium

"Living in New York can leave one feeling invisible. The city is indifferent. And you are but one in the sky of eight million stars. It can compel you to act like a child, to shout, stamp, and punch to get attention, to prove you actually exist. Maybe howling at each other is like planting a flag in the soil, or carving your name in a tree for next season's campers: It's just another way of saying 'I wuz here.'"
Jane Borden, I Totally Meant to Do That