Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Man-Eating Tiger

Engine Company 6


"The experience of being in New York is like stroking a man-eating tiger: As much as it scares the bejesus out of you, for those moments it allows you to touch it, you know you are blessed and immortal."
Jennifer Cox, Around the World in 80 Dates

Monday, May 30, 2011

American Dream

Fraunces Tavern

"Whatever your dream, you can realize it in New York City. There's nothing the City doesn't offer — if you want it badly enough. For those willing to clear the hurdles and beat the odds, New York City is the last true bastion of the American dream."
Ellen R. Shapiro, Relocating to New York City and Surrounding Areas

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Ends of the Earth


Baxter St.

"The ends of the earth are gathered together down one New York side street. You can dine, drink and amuse yourself in three continents."
J.B. Priestley, quoted in Helluva Town

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Frank Capra

Ninth Avenue

"Being in New York is like taking part in a Frank Capra movie - crazy, human, beautiful."
Martin Dunford and Jack Holland, New York: The Rough Guide

Friday, May 27, 2011

New York, New York

Empire State Building

"New York, New York, so good they named it twice
New York, New York, all the scandal and vice."
Gerard Kenny, New York, New York

Thursday, May 26, 2011

City of Excitement


"New York... City of excitement, of promise, gathering place of all the unknown, vibrant people she hoped someday to meet, who were at this very moment spending planned and unplanned evenings in ways that seemed so much a part of that sophisticated, gay unknown out there and so remote from everything she was used to."
Rona Jaffe, The Best of Everything

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

For the Very Young

College Walk at Columbia University

"It is often said that New York is a city for only the very rich and the very poor. It is less often said that New York is also, at least for those of us who came there from somewhere else, a city for only the very young."
Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

A Good One is Hard to Find

Central Park North

"I know you're new to New York, but apartments are a pretty big deal here. A good one is harder to find than a good man, so we tend to prattle on a bit about our digs."
Jennifer Coburn, This Christmas

Monday, May 23, 2011

Little Compassion

Grace Church

"In New York, people get used to being on their own and not accepting help, since in this big, rich city, there often seems to be so little compassion available."
Kelly Cutrone, Normal Gets You Nowhere

Sunday, May 22, 2011

One Big Theater

The High Line

"Every person on the streets of New York is a type. The city is one big theater where everyone is on display."
Jerry Rubin, Growing Up at Thirty-Seven

Saturday, May 21, 2011

The Best of Everything

Lincoln Center

"New York tended to plant in the minds of its children a daunting perception of the world; to be surrounded by the best of everything was both a privilege and a curse."
Hyatt Bass, The Embers

Friday, May 20, 2011

Punchline

West Village

"I love New York. It's like thousands of straight lines just lookin' for a punchline."
Lester (Alan Alda), Crimes and Misdemeanors

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Upper Hand

Governors Island

"Leave New York and it leaves you behind so quickly. New York is like the lover you leave, the one who still somehow retains the upper hand for the rest of your life."
Jillian Lauren, Some Girls

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

The Bigness of New York

Midtown West

"New Yorkers are accustomed to the city's bigness--the density, the relentlessness, the tabloid headlines, the extra zeros in their paychecks and their bank accounts."
James Barron, The New York Times' Book of New York

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Little Surprises

Greenacre Park

"Everyone loves New York City for all these different reasons. The culture. The mix of people. The pace. The food. But for me, it's like one epic Easter egg hunt. You're always finding these little surprises around every corner."
Gayle Forman, Where She Went

Monday, May 16, 2011

Behind the Velvet Ropes

Times Square

"That was one of the things she hated about New York, how you were supposed to be cool and take for granted the awe-inspiring people and events you'd fantasized about back home in Altoona or Amherst, By the time you were behind the velvet ropes or sitting at the front booth, you were probably too jaded to admit how lucky you felt or to enjoy it the way you once imagined you would have."
Jay McInerney, The Good Life

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Grotesque


"The skyscrapers seemed like tall gravestones. I wondered why, if the United States was so rich, as surely it was, did its biggest city look so grotesque? At that moment I sensed for the first time that people in New York could not be as happy as we used to think they were back home."
Bernardo Vega, Memoirs of Bernardo Vega

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Friday, May 13, 2011

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Old-Fashioned and Fast-Moving

The Dorilton

"I was amazed by how old-fashioned and European New York seemed—quite different to what I'd imagined. Bellboys and maître d's, all that sort of thing. Unnecessary fluff and very unexpected. It was as if somebody had said, “These are the rules” in 1920 and it hadn't changed a bit since. On the other hand, it was the fastest-moving modern place you could be."
Keith Richards, Life

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Crazy New Yorkers

Central Park

"I wonder if living in New York makes people crazy, or if they're crazy to begin with and New York attracts them like flies."
Candace Bushnell, Summer and the City

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

First Birthday

Empire State Building

We're turning one today! To celebrate, besides eating cake, we''ve selected ten of my favorite quotes... so far -- but stay with us for the wittiest, funniest and craziest things said about the greatest city in the world:

"The first month in New York for a newcomer has this certain amazing magic about it that is indescribable. Incandescent lucidity.  However long you stay in New York, you pretty much spent the rest of your time there trying to recapture that feeling. Chasing the Manhattan dragon."
Hugh MacLeod, Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity

"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

"New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it -- once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough."
John Steinbeck, America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction

"New York. The world's most dramatic city. Like a permanent short circuit, sputtering and sparking up into the night sky all night long. No place like it for living. And probably no place like it for dying."
Cornell Woolrich, Manhattan Noir 2

"New York blazes like a magnificent jewel in its fit setting of sea, and earth, and stars."
Thomas Wolfe, The Web and the Rock

"New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and the perishable dream itself. To think of 'living' there was to reduce the miraculous to the mundane; one does not 'live' at Xanadu."
Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

"This city is reward for all it will enable you to achieve and punishment for all the crimes it will force you to commit."
Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York

"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

"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

 "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

What's your favorite? 

Monday, May 9, 2011

Stickpin

Chrysler Building

"New York is the diamond stick-pin on the shirt-front of America."
Robert Shackleton, The Book Of New York

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Fashionable New Yorkers

Times Square

"Everybody in New York, including police horses, dresses fashionably, and whenever I’m there, even in my sharpest funeral-quality suit with no visible ketchup stains, I feel as though I’m wearing a Hefty trash bag. And it’s last year's Hefty trash bag."
Dave Barry, Dave Barry Talks Back

Saturday, May 7, 2011

If You Can't Say Something Nice

Lower East Side

"For generations --since long before the great cities of this country became associated in the public mind with their problems rather than their wonders-- New Yorkers have believed in the old saying that they learn at their mother's knee: 'If you can't say something nice, you're never in danger of being taken for an out-of-towner.'"
Calvin Trillin,  The Subway Chronicles

Friday, May 6, 2011

Disease

Smallpox Hospital

"New York is not a city. New York is a disease."
Franklin H. Wentworth, Quarterly of the National Fire Protection Association

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Fabulous, Strange, Disturbing

Riverside South

"A fabulous, strange, disturbing city, where the man outside a group must feel more alone than anyone else on the earth."
Raymond-Léopold Bruckberger, One Sky To Share

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Too Many Possibilities

Yoga in Bryant Park

"One thing that's both good and bad about living in New York City is the sense that I could be doing so much -- going to the ballet, going to an off-off-Broadway, taking a graphic design class, shopping in Williamsburg, eating in Astoria. But I almost never do those things, so the possibilities are exciting, but also a reproach."
Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Narcissus

Harlem Meer and Central Park North

"New York is the Narcissus among cities, ready to die for love of itself."
Frances Wilson, Travel Magazine

Monday, May 2, 2011

Ugly, Dirty, and Yet...

Brooklyn Bridge and downtown Manhattan

"New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it -- once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough."
John Steinbeck, America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Infinite City


"Today the traveller from London who arrives for the first time in New York is struck by an impression that he has landed in a city of infinite size, infinite efficiency and almost excessive speed."
Nellie Melba, Melodies and Memories