Tuesday, December 31, 2013
New York was New Year's Eve
"New York was wall-to-wall mile-high buildings. It was the opposite of dinky Santa Ana or even Los Angeles. It was Times Square, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, and the Chrysler Building too. But most of all it was New Year's Eve. It was hundreds of thousands —no, millions— of people gathered together to celebrate the ringing in of a new year."
Diane Keaton, Then Again
Monday, December 30, 2013
New York at Night
"New York at night is full of such beauty that if the only thing you had ever experienced was sailing into New York by night you would have gained an impression you would not forget as long as you live."
Fritz Lang, quoted in Metropolis
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Number One
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125th Street subway station |
"In the pantheon of United States cities, New York is hands-down, flat-out, number one. Gotham. The enchilada. The straw that stirs the drink."
Jim Reisler, Babe Ruth Slept Here
Saturday, December 28, 2013
Hive
"New York was a hive. You could not just live here. You had to be somebody, do something, it didn't matter what."
Mary Cantwell, Manhattan, When I Was Young
Friday, December 27, 2013
42nd Street
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East 42nd |
"Forty-second Street! The top of the world, they call it. Where's the bottom then? You can walk along with your hands out and they'll put cinders in your cap."
Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Mad, Mad World
"It's a mad, mad world in Manhattan, where taxis, pedicabs, commuters, pedestrians --even horse-drawn carriages-- careen around looking for space. The city is heady, frustrating, shocking, almost overwhelming it its intensity and, ultimately, incredibly exhilarating."
Ginger Otis, Lonely Planet New York City Encounter (Best Of)
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Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Miracle on 34th Street
"It's Miracle on 34th Street, not miracle on 134th Street. The only miracle on 134th Street is that we get to participate at all. Half the time Santa skips us on his way downtown, just like a taxicab."
Jessica Williams, The Daily Show
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Christmas Carol
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Christmas wreaths for sale on Sixth Avenue |
"Only in New York is 'Shut the fuck up, some of us work in the morning' considered a Christmas carol."
Dennis Miller, I Rant, Therefore I Am
Monday, December 23, 2013
Rata-tat-tat
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Eighth Avenue |
"Traffic growled and snarled, rising at times to a machine-gun rata-tat-tat, while pedestrians were scuttling about with that desperate ratlike urgency characteristic of all big American cities, but which reaches its ultimate in New York."
Fritz Leiber, The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories
Sunday, December 22, 2013
Out-of-Towners
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Entrance to the PATH train |
"The problem with New York is not New Yorkers. It's the out-of-towners who move here and inflict out-of-town aggression."
Karen Siplin, Such a Girl
Saturday, December 21, 2013
Skyline Dreams
"New York is like a boyfriend
One whose sweater I will keep
And every night when I put it on
Of the skyline I will dream."
Ashley Jones, New York is Like a Boyfriend
Friday, December 20, 2013
Unseen World
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West 32nd |
"There is no question there is an unseen world. The problem is, how far is it from midtown and how late is it open?"
Woody Allen, quoted in Picturing New York
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Family
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Gramercy Park North |
"New York is one big family, and if you ain't part of the family you're no one."
Lauren O'Farrell, Stitch New York
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Mecca for Masochists
"New York is a mecca for masochists. It is the Atlantis of our masochistic fantasies."
Gael Greene, Bite
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Dream Machine
"I almost feel bad for people who are born and raised here because you’ll never understand how the outsider feels about New York City. People look at this place as a dream machine, as an opportunity to escape whatever their current reality is. They look at it like it’s magical."
Mallory Hagan, The New York Times
Monday, December 16, 2013
How a New Yorker Acts
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West Chelsea |
"Act like a New Yorker: a pushy obnoxious knock-the-other-guy-down-and-take-his-hot-dog resident of the greatest city on Earth."
Barney Stimpson (Neil Patrick Harris), How I Met Your Mother
Sunday, December 15, 2013
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Quicker Pace
"New Yorkers can't settle down anywhere else in the world because they just naturally have a quicker pace. You get out of the bed faster in New York."
Al Sharpton, quoted in New York Magazine
Friday, December 13, 2013
Thousands of Invisible Boundaries
"A city can be so isolating, almost as if the more different types of people there are crammed together in a small area, the farther away they all are from each other. New York is the same way -- a little island crisscrossed with thousands of invisible boundaries."
Anne Raeff, Clara Mondschein's Melancholia
Thursday, December 12, 2013
Crowded
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Times Square subway station |
"New York is crowded. Other people always get in your way. You can't stretch your legs without kicking somebody and you can't think without static from 8 million other brains."
Robert Anasi, The Last Bohemia
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
City of Contradictions
"New York is the most glamorous city in the world, the most romantic, the noisiest, the dirtiest, the best, the worst, the most exciting, the most depressing. No two people have experienced the same New York twice."
Jonathan Scheff, New York City Icons: 50 Classic Slices of the Big Apple
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Island on an Island
"Times Square, New York, is an electric island floating on a larger island of lonesome parks and lonesome apartment houses and knifepointed buildings stretching Up. (I will think dazedly one night: Someday this city will tear its wharf-lined fringes from the ocean and soar in desperation to the Sky.)"
John Rechy, City of Night
Monday, December 9, 2013
Death Sentence
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Funeral home on Third Avenue |
"That first week of winter wind in New York is a death sentence. You have appeals and reprieves, but nothing will get you through it but time."
Brendan Jay Sullivan, Rivington Was Ours
Sunday, December 8, 2013
Fastest City
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The Dakota |
"I love New York. It's the hottest city going! I haven't been everywhere, but it's the fastest city on earth."
John Lennon, Lennon in America
Saturday, December 7, 2013
New York Stereotypes
"You often see people move to New York and immediately start conforming to stereotype. The pressure, whether overtly felt or only dimly sensed, of being part of something as overwhelming as New York blows the mind of anyone who does not have a perfectly solid-state personality, which is to say most of us."
Roy Edroso, Burn magazine
Friday, December 6, 2013
Power and Roar
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Midtown Manhattan (Pixabay) |
"New York turns its back on the Atlantic. The power and roar New York looks to are its own."
Cynthia Ozick, Quarrel & Quandary
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Psychoanalysis
"In New York everyone is on psychoanalysis and they never get anything done, they never get off it."
William S. Burroughs, Conversations with William S. Burroughs
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
New York Attitude
"LA is the me city, Ruby said, and New York is the you city. In LA it's fuck me. In New York it's fuck you. Adopt the attitude. It's all in the face. Mostly in the eyes."
Tom Spanbauer, In the City of Shy Hunters
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
No Place I'd Rather Be
"New York, New York is everything they say
And no place that I'd rather be
Where else can you do a half a million things
And all at a quarter to three."
Huey Lewis and the News, The Heart Of Rock & Roll
Monday, December 2, 2013
Bigger, Better, Faster, More
"I had never seen any city like it, and I had never felt so small, but small in such a wonderful way. Small in a way that didn't feel bad, or lonely. Everything felt vital and important here. Bigger, better, faster, more. As if everyone were essential and functioning in a great big machine with lots of moving parts, and it really mattered that they were all here and going about their business exactly as they were doing. That was the moment I vowed that I'd move here one day, the moment New York wooed me."
Helen Wan, The Partner Track
Sunday, December 1, 2013
The Motion of New York
"Some people wonder if all this motion really gets anywhere. The New Yorker's answer is that it doesn't have to; if you're in New York, you're already there."
Susanna Margolis and Marjorie Palmer, Secrets of New York City
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Friday, November 29, 2013
Naked Cities
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Naked Cowgirls in Times Square |
"There are eight million naked cities in this naked city."
Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Reason to Be Thankful
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
People in New York
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Little Italy |
"People in New York are either New Yorkers, or they're Spanish, or Italian, or Irish, or whatever. Who the hell moves to Williamsburg and says, Hey, I'm an American?"
Warren Ellis, Crooked Little Vein
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Zen Wisdom
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Brooklyn Botanic Garden |
"Any attempt to define New York today recalls the Zen wisdom that you can't step in the same stream twice. The city is so mutable, so constantly changing, that it's almost impossible to get a fix on it."
Cheryl Farr Leas, Frommer's New York City from $80 a Day 2000
Monday, November 25, 2013
Never Stops
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Eighth Avenue |
"The amazing thing about New York is that it never really stops—it's always going, one way or the other."
Eric Bogosian, Perforated Heart
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Disdain
Saturday, November 23, 2013
Foreigners
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East 41st St. |
"New York also has its thousands of Real Folks, but New York is cursed with unnumbered foreigners."
Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt
Friday, November 22, 2013
Vibrant Pace
"When I think about arriving in New York City, I anticipate its vibrant and pulsating pace which creates passionate feelings inside me."
Elizabeth Taylor, New York Vertical
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Manhattanization
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The buildings that will replace 5 Pointz (Source: Inhabitat.com) |
"All over the world, 'Manhattanization' signifies everything in a city that is thought not to be authentic: high-rise buildings that grow taller every year, dense crowds where no one knows your name, high prices for inferior living conditions, and intense competition to be in style."
Sharon Zukin, Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Mammon
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5 Pointz |
"Mammon, n. The god of the world's leading religion. His chief temple is in the holy city of New York."
Ambrose Bierce, Devil's Dictionary
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Music and Internal Engines
"The city is like poetry: it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines."
E.B. White, Here is New York
Monday, November 18, 2013
Victorian Novel
"New York was like a massive Victorian novel which forced you to work your way through its broad canvas and complicated subplots."
Douglas Kennedy, The Pursuit of Happiness
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