Useless

Cherry Street

"A car is useless in New York, essential everywhere else. The same with good manners."
Mignon McLaughlin, quoted in Words from the Wise

Face of America

Statue of Liberty

"New York has always been the face our country showed the world: the first port of call for millions of immigrants, the capital city for President Washington's inauguration, America's chief destination for visitors from every part of the world."
L.B. Deyo and David Leibowitz, Invisible Frontier: Exploring the Tunnels, Ruins, and Rooftops of Hidden New York

Your Path

Brooklyn Bridge Park

"New York is a spectacular place to start on your path in life. It is so vibrant, and the people who live there are unrivaled in their authenticity."
Nina Garcia, The Style Strategy

God-Given Right

Hook & Ladder 8

"Being miserable and treating other people like dirt is every New Yorker's God-given right."
The Mayor (David Margulies), Ghostbusters 2 (Widescreen Edition)

Gold

View from Centre Street

"New York is all about gold. Except for the top of the Chrysler Building and cell phones, which are silver."
Toni Schlesinger, Five Flights Up

New York in the Movies

Tribeca Cinemas

"New York's a very tough town, Benny. If you went to more movies you'd see that."
John Lahr, The Autograph Hound

Horoscope

Sutton Place Park

"New York is a city that's interested in power and money (Sun conjunct Pluto in Taurus) as well as business and commerce. Natives are earthy, practical and often materialistic (Sun and Moon in earth signs)."
Marc H. Penfield, Horoscopes of the USA and Canada

Make-Your-Own Movie

Crosby Street

"New York walking isn't exercise: it's a continually showing make-your-own movie."

Roy Blount Jr, Now, Where Were We?

Will Never Rain

Grace Plaza

"New Yorkers are inclined to assume that it will never rain, and certainly not on New Yorkers."
Brooks Atkinson, Once Around the Sun

It Would Make a Stone Sick

Midtown West

"I don't like the life here in New York. There is no greenery. It would make a stone sick."
Nikita Khrushchev, The Harper Book of Quotations 3rd Edition

The Best Known

Times Square

"No spot in America is better known than New York, and no spot in New York is better known than Times Square."

Benton MacKaye, The New Exploration: A Philosophy of Regional Planning

Too Big for Love

South Street Seaport

"Maybe New York's just too big a town. There's millions of people in this city. How in all this mess is a guy supposed to find the love of his life? I mean, where do you even begin?"
Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor), How I Met Your Mother: Season One

No Room for Amateurs

Alice Tully Hall

"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

Bluer and Greener

Bryant Park

"In New York the sky is bluer, and the grass is greener, and the girls are prettier, and the steaks are thicker, and the buildings are higher, and the streets are wider, and the air is finer, than the sky, or the grass, or the girls, or the steaks, or the air of any place else in the world."
Edna Ferber, Buttered Side Down: Stories (1912)

Manhattan is a Cathedral

Grand Central Terminal

"I've always thought that the look of New York, the architecture was fundamentally religious. Manhattan is a cathedral, you know - the modern cathedral."
Herbert Muschamp, New York Vertical

N'Yawk, N'Yawk

Empire State Building

"A town that has no ceiling price,
A town of double-talk,
A town so big men name her twice,
Like so: N'Yawk, N'Yawk."
Christopher Morley, "Ballad of New York, New York," I Speak of the City: Poems of New York

The Best Perspective

Roosevelt Island Tram

"The city looks its best from the air, or by night, or when you are drunk; in any circumstances, in fact, except those of stone-cold sobriety, by day, at street level. Abnormal itself, a many-fingered gesture of defiance at the sky, it demands an abnormal approach."
Kenneth Tynan, Tynan Right and Left: Plays, Films, People, Places and Events.

No Time to Have an Esthetic

The Andy Monument

"Some people say Paris is more esthetic than New York. Well, in New York you don't have time to have an esthetic because it takes half the day to go downtown and half the day to go uptown."
Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol : (From A to B and Back Again)

Search of Freedom

Washington Square Arch

"What I love about New York is that people have always come there in search of freedom, and usually found it."
Edward Rutherfurd, New York: The Novel

You're in New York Now

Duffy Square

"You're in New York now!
You are the sharpest,
You're the prettiest,
You're the best air-conditioned and the wittiest.
The most pop-arted,
You're the rudest and the biggest-hearted.
You're in New York now."
Matt Dubey, Dean Fuller, Tony Hendra, Smith, A Musical (French's Musical Library)

Poor in New York

Penn Station

"I love New York but it's a city that's very easy to be poor in."
Reed Martin, The Reel Truth: Everything You Didn't Know You Need to Know About Making an Independent Film

Round Pyramid

One Police Plaza

"New York is all round; New York is vivid red. New York is a round pyramid."
Salvador Dali, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali

The Skyline is Not a Mirage

Brooklyn Bridge Park

"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

Moneyed Gloss

The Standard Hotel

"The immensely rich history that this city wore so proudly and loudly on its streets and in its different neighborhoods is disappearing under a bland layer of gentility, servility, and newly moneyed gloss. New York will be recognizable only by its landmarks, not its vibrant and historic mix."
Maggie Wrigley, "Love and Loss in New York," Suburbanization of New York

Perfect Spring

New York Public Library

"I miss New York more than I would have imagined. I miss those perfect spring days. Wraiths of steam rising from the manhole vents backlit by slanting early-morning sun. Cross streets thick with cherry trees in bloom. The way time seems to slow to a crawl in diners and coffee shops."
William Boyd, Any Human Heart

Close-Ups

"Le GUICHET" by Alexander Calder

"What I love about New York is: it's a city in close-up, a city of close-ups."
Vito Accoci, Dialogues in Public Art

Always Reborn

Broadway and 112th

"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

In Love

Lower Manhattan

"When the skyline came into view for the first time my heart beat out of my chest. It was exactly as I imagined it would be. Soho. Fifth Avenue. The Music Man. Within a few days, I was riding the subway by myself like it had always been this way. Manhattan and I were in love."
Brad Goreski, Born to Be Brad