Beautiful and Hideous

"New York, beautiful New York, hideous New York, is stretched ahead of us, the thick ribbon of Manhattan joined loosely to the mainland and the nub of Long Island by thin threads of bridge."
Chris Weitz, The New Order

Dangerous New York

"The city of course, seemed too dangerous. Especially during the summer, the streets so dog mad with heat, untempered, literally steaming with possibilities, none of them good. People got meaner, stuck beneath all that hard light and stone. They worked through it by talking, speaking, shouting, and screaming, in every language on earth."
Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker

Inside Out

"New York City turns me inside out; it works its way under my skin and demands constant attention; it breathes in my face like its panhandlers, and it yells in my ears like those angry men with squeegees who used to rush your car when you drove into the City. New York throws you around, like its cabs and subway trains. Its crowds of know-it-alls push past you as though you were not there. "Who the hell are you, anyway, and what do you want here?" the City seems to say."
Shaun O'Connell, Remarkable, Unspeakable New York

Expression of America

Empire State Building

"New York is the true expression of America, not only of its wealth, its violence, its blending of races, its powerful and youthful enthusiasm, but of all its amazing qualities, its defects and its virtues."
Gino Speranza, The Diary of Gina Speranza

Review

Cinema Village

"In New York, people come up to me on the street and tell me what they think of my pictures — people I've never met who think they know me. They say, 'John, I like your work, but that movie sucked! Who's your agent? Why'd you pick that project? Who's your representation?' We're talking mailmen, cops giving you the review, whether you like it or not."
John Leguizamo, Los Angeles Magazine

Walk the Dog

East 25th

"This is not Butt Scratch, Ohio. This is New York. Take your dog for a walk, they strip him for parts."
Sally (Debra Mooney), Kirk

Underdogs and Loudmouths

"New York is a city of underdogs and loudmouths and people who just couldn't stand their small towns for one more second; in a sense, even straight people come to New York to be gay."
Paul Rudnick, New York Magazine

Stage

Pier 17

"I think of New York as a stage, peopled over the centuries by the most fascinating characters anyone could ever hope to meet anywhere, in and out of books, and I feel lucky to be among them, taking my turn on the stage."
Lesley Dormen, LesleyDormen.com

Town of Contrasts

"A town of contrasts, puritan and libertine; the two-sided picture of a well-policed America and a savage continent, of East and West; a few yards from the luxury of Fifth Avenue and one is in battered and dirty Eighth Avenue. New York is the symbol of America, and half of its population is foreign; it is a center of Anglo-Saxon culture, speaking Yiddish; . . . after making you rich in a week, it ruins you in one morning."
Paul Morand, Mirror for Gotham

On Top of Each Other

"One of the many great things about New York is people here are sarcastic, we have attitude, we're realistic, and we deal with people every day on top of each other on the subway or on the streets."
Theo Cogan, New York Rock

Great and Romantic Place

Grand Central Terminal

"Have I said yet that Brooklyn is a great and romantic place? Its simultaneous multiplicity catches in the brain, it is a streaming, strange place. Its history is generally unknown to the immigrants who arrive each generation, who come to the church spires and endless blocks of row homes, the places named after the dead, the names themselves Anglicized versions of the words used by the Dutch settlers who seized that green heel of land where the Hudson meets the Atlantic."
Colin Harrison, Bodies Electric

Sex Life

"None of us has a sex life. This is Manhattan. Everyone is too busy to have sex."
Sarah Morgan, Sleepless in Manhattan

Land of Peace and Plenty

Avenue A

"New York is a remarkable place peopled by human flotsam and  jetsam, the lucky ones, the successful immigrants – oxymoron! – who crashed or burned their way through the walls of paper, and find themselves in a land of peace and plenty."
Erich Maria Remarque, The Promised Land

Just Built

Greenpoint

"The first impression of a stranger entering New York is that it was built the night before."
New York Daily News, quoted in New York: The Big Apple Quote Book

Human Misery

Central Park West

"New York feeds on human misery. Gradually, it sucks the life out of us. It's a monster."
Perrine Valley, Mad Bull 34

Definitely Change

Third Avenue

"I try not to freak out every time a favorite restaurant or bookstore closes. I remind myself that life is change, and that life in New York is definitely change."
Roz Chast, Going into Town

New York Spring

Riverside Drive

"From the Battery there comes a breath of the sea; from Westchester, a scent of the country; and when the two unite the result is intoxication. At such a time the strugglers of Manhattan are kept to their daily tasks only by their native instinct to herd. It is certain that if anyone of them should become temporarily insane, pull on his coat, and start for the Catskills the city would be depopulated in thirty minutes. For if ever spring is spring, it is so in New York."
Rex Stout, Target Practice

The World

"New York is the world with every vice and blemish and beauty and there's privacy thrown in. What more could you ask?"
John Steinbeck, America and Americans

Los Angeles vs. New York

Hunters Point Community Library

"Los Angeles is the miniseries and New York is the book."
Kennedy, SPIN Magazine

East Village

Target in the East Village

"I don't even want to talk about what the East Village used to be like compared to today. It was like Mad Max, post-apocalyptic. Now, it looks like a fucking Dave Matthews concert."
Anthony Bourdain, The Layover

Quiet

6BC Botanical Garden

"The city of New York itself is as quiet on Sunday as any country village. The striking thing about New York is the stillness of its streets, and those sections of the city that are most crowded and noisy on week.days are almost entirely abandoned and as still as a country bye-way on Sunday."
Henry Collins Brown, Valentine's Manual of the City of New York

Staying Alive

Alphabet City

"My main concern while in New York wasn't becoming a hot shot. I was more concerned with staying alive, and that took all the pleasure out of the experience. I didn't know where to find a grocery store so I subsisted on hot dogs, peanuts and whatever else I could buy from a street vendor. I didn't know how to hail a cab (apparently there's an art to it). I stood on the edge of the sidewalk and waved my arms around but no one stopped, so I limited my entire universe to however far I could walk and I never walked too far because I was afraid I'd get lost and never find my way back home again. Perhaps that's why there are so many homeless people in New York; maybe they're not really lost, maybe some of them have homes but they just don't know how to get there."
Marlin Bressi, Blow Me

Grace and Gaiety

Washington Square Park (Pexels)

"New York itself is a miracle which a large book would not be sufficient to explain. When I stepped ashore, then I thought I was in a larger Rotterdam; when I found my way to Broadway, it seemed as though I was in Paris, and that Paris had taken to business. There were quaintness, grace and gaiety, brightness and grimness, all about."
G. J. Holyoake, quoted in Illustrated New York: The Metropolis of To-day

Social Disease

"New York is the body of our social disease: I can see the disease here, as elsewhere, but the body—concentrated—is the city, and to live in it does strange, secret, terrible things to one's perspective."
Waldo Frank, quoted in Independent Intellectuals in the United States, 1910-1945

Early June in New York

Gramercy Park

"It is early June, and New York is empty of everyone but those chained to it by necessity, by poverty, or by having nowhere else to go."
Paula Cohen, Gramercy Park

Evolving

"New York is constantly evolving. It's hard to recognize the city I grew up in."
Daniel Holzman, Tasting Table

Mania

"New York is not the city that never sleeps. New York
is the city where practically nobody exists.
where consequently hardly anyone´s afraid. New York is a mania
made of twenty-two automatic Brooklyns. of 2.2
to the 1.3 power Manhattans."
Ron Winkler, Since It's New York

The Problem with New York

NYC manhole

"The only problem with New York is that it is full of New Yorkers."
"Madan," quoted in South Asian Immigration Stories: Indian Voices in America

Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down

News van on Rose Hill

"No matter what they say, most New Yorkers love watching train wrecks, dope deal shootouts, and fistfights. New York is full of flesh-eaters. It's a thumbs-up, thumbs-down kind of town. Start spreading the news, but watch your back."
Peter Bodo, The Courts of Babylon

Market Town

Grand Central Market

"New York is first and foremost a market town. Its primary business is selling. Its chief topic of conversation in money." 

Russell Baker, Writers and Age