Pressure

Riverside Park South

"I have lived in New York long enough to feel a deep modification in the atmosphere, to feel the absurdity of the pressure the city exerts."
William Styron, Conversations with William Styron (Literary Conversations Series)

Safe Deliveries

Two Boots

"You're in New York City. Why go out and risk your life when everything's delivered?"
Elinor Lipman, The Family Man

New York Dogs

Central Park

"New York was the only city I'd ever encountered that moved more than I did. Nothing sat still. Nothing rested. Not even the dogs were allowed to be lazy. Instead they were shuffled outside for "walks" by anxious owners wielding plastic bags, waiting impatiently for their precious pups to poop so they could move on to that meeting they always seemed to be late for."
Angie Day, The Way to Somewhere: A Novel

Sepia

Promenade at the World Financial Center

"New York is always in sepia tones."
John Rechy, Bodies and Souls

The Yarn of Our Dreams

"New York is not a city of dreams, it is a city built by us, dreamers. As we dream, we are pressed against the ground, that is why our city has grown so far into the sky. Manhattan is the yarn of our dreams."
Dubravka Ugrešić, Have a Nice Day

Everyone is Gay

Stonewall Inn

"Everyone in New York is gay."
Paul Rudnick, Social Disease

Money

One Central Park

"This New York was so different from the city in which he's grown up. Manhattan was all about money now, all about trying to make enough of it just to survive."
Adam Langer, The Thieves of Manhattan: A Novel

Only Promises

Central Park

"New York City, like the country it's in, is a place that promises you everything but gives you nothing."
Ernesto Quinonez, Chango's Fire: A Novel

The Sun

"Helsinki was a chill planet on the distant edge of things. New York was the sun."
Richard Rayner, The Cloud Sketcher: A Novel

The Most Irritating Thing

"The most irritating thing of all is that New Yorkers really don't care what you say about their city. "
Russell Baker, There's a Country in My Cellar

The Most Horrible Place

Bleecker Street

"I felt as I had always felt about New York  — that it is the most horrible place on God's earth. No matter how many times I escape I am brought back, like a runaway slave, each time detesting it, loathing it, more and more."
Henry Miller, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, Vol 1

Decadent

Prometheus statue

"I think New York is -- well, decadent is the only word for it."
Brian Moore, I Am Mary Dunne

The Decider

Wall Street

"New York was the most important city in the world, the center of management and finance for all the economies of the global village. Japan might build the automobiles. England might sew the suits. And maybe the Pacific Rim would eventually produce all the electronics. But it was New York that decided what would be produced and raised the money to build the factory."
Diana Diamond, The Trophy Wife

Nature and the City

Central Park West

"Nature and New York City have a lot in common. Both are absolutely indifferent to the human condition."
Andy Rooney, Andy Rooney: 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit

Brutal, Ugly, Frightening

"In the thirties New York was not merely the vital metropolis, brimming with politics and contention, that has since become a sentimental legend; it was also brutal, ugly, frightening."
Irving Howe, The New York Intellectuals Reader

Idol-Head with Traffic-Light Eyes

Bowery

"It is a myth, the city, the rooms and windows, the steam-spitting streets; for anyone, everyone, a different myth, an idol-head with traffic-light eyes winking a tender green, a cynical red. This island, floating in river water like a diamond iceberg."

Truman Capote, "New York," Portraits and Observations: The Essays of Truman Capote (Modern Library Paperbacks)

Hick Town

12th Avenue

"We looked at New York as two things: one was, of course, the Big Apple, and the other was the world’s biggest hick town."
David Mamet, David Mamet in Conversation (Theater: Theory/Text/Performance)

Why I Came to New York

Times Square

"I came to New York because I thought it was the center of the universe and wanted to be in the middle of it all."
Alex McCord, Little Kids, Big City: Tales from a Real House in New York City (With Lessons on Life and Love for Your Own Concrete Jungle)

Crucible of Culture

Columbia University

"New York has always been a 'crucible of culture,' a meeting place of the old and the new, a catalytic agent necessary to transform a new world into America."
George J. Lankevich, New York City: A Short History

Fatally Fascinating

Downtown Manhattan

"New York City is the most fatally fascinating thing in America. She sits like a great witch at the gate of the country, showing her alluring white face and hiding her crooked hands and feet under the folds of her wide garments-constantly enticing thousands from far within and tempting those who came from across the seas to go no farther."

James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (An African American Heritage Book)

Beginning of the World

Central Park West

"New York had all the iridescence of the beginning of the world."
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up (Reissue)

A Nobody

Fifth Avenue

"The hardest thing to be in the New York is a nobody, and the town is full of them."
Charlie LeDuff, Work and Other Sins: Life in New York City and Thereabouts

Cosmopolitan Living

"If you are going to live on this continent at all, New York is the only place where a cosmopolitan can live."
Mary Clemmer, Victoire; A Novel

Dream and Reality

Manhattan Bridge

"Manhattan is the dream, Brooklyn is the reality."
Marc Eliot, Song of Brooklyn: An Oral History of America's Favorite Borough

Virtue and Vice

Second Avenue

"What passes as virtue in Kansas is regarded as intolerable vice in New York, and vice versa."
H.L. Mencken, A Second Mencken Chrestomathy: A New Selection from the Writings of America's Legendary Editor, Critic, and Wit (Maryland Paperback Bookshelf)