Second Birthday

Riverside Park South

We've entered the terrible twos! To celebrate, here are ten of our favorite quotes from the past year.

10. "Half the people in New York if they were anywhere else would be either interviewed or arrested."

Edmund White, City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and '70s

9. "New York is a city where there is no room for amateurs, even in crossing the street."

George Segal, quoted in Comedy techniques for writers and performers: The hearts theory of humor writing

8. "What New York represents, perfectly and consistently, in literature and life alike, is the idea of Hope. Hope for a new life, for something big to happen, hope for a better life or a bigger apartment."

Adam Gopnik, Through the Children's Gate: A Home in New York (Vintage)

7. "That's what I love about New York City — it's always being reborn, it's always reinventing itself. And demands the same of you — that you keep readjusting to time."

John Guare, Landscape of the Body: A Play

6. "New York City is America—dynamic, maybe brutal, but always aspiring towards the higher, the better, the impossible."

Van Dinh Tran, Blue Dragon, White Tiger: A Tet Story

5. "Being in New York is like falling in love over and over again."

Rachel Berry (Lea Michele), Glee: Season Two

4. "There has never been anything like New York on the face of planet Earth. They can say what they want about ancient Rome, but it wasn't like this."

Wynton Marsalis, My City, My New York

3. "New York is like that. It is brilliant and glittering and hard and ruthless, and a terrible cheat and a liar, but it is also full of tender little surprises, and when it's in a giving mood, it has a lot to give. If you play your cards right, and you sweat a lot, and you pay your dues, the rewards are not sometimes, but often, beyond your wildest dreams."
Lillian Roxon, Lillian Roxon: Mother of Rock

2. "There's a swell when you first see Manhattan. It's true, you think, the skyline is not a mirage, and you can be inside of it, naked in that gold light."

John Weir, What I Did Wrong: A Novel

1. "This is not a city. This is a world with whole countries in it."

Ann-Marie MacDonald, Fall On Your Knees (Oprah's Book Club)

What's your favorite?