Subway Feeling

Subway sign on Central Park West

"I love New York. The thing I love about it the most is, even when I'm not in the subway, I feel like I am."
Bill Maher, True Story

Manhattan by Night

Empire State Building

"Boast as we may, Manhattan is not beautiful. It is only an ugly pile of square blocks by day. But by night, it rises in compelling glory, the most brilliant, most beautiful, most inspiring of all the cities of the earth."
The Bookman

Laying the Blame

James J. Walker Park

"In New York it's not whether you win or lose--it's how you lay the blame."

Fran Lebowitz, Metropolitan Life

The New York Skyline

"I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline."
Ayn Rand, Fountainhead

You Get What You Pay For

Statue of Liberty

"The Big Apple has it kind of easy in that people come from all around with relatively minimal expectations. They're going to see a dirty and crowded city, but with an intensity unmatched anywhere else, and this is exactly what they get, plus the Statue of Liberty. You may not like New York City, but you can't say you don't get what you pay for."
Jason D. Scorse, As It Was In The Beginning

The City Americans Resent

Times Square

"Foreign visitors in the early part of the century noticed something that has not yet ended -- the resentment in which New York was held by people from other parts of the country. New York was the seat of arrogance, of cosmopolitanism, of luxury, of vice."
Luc Sante, Low Life

A Place to Lose and Find Yourself

Plaza 33

"Part of living in New York—even the neighborhoods far less gaudy and circus-like than this one—is losing yourself in crowds, subsuming yourself and your better nature under the currents of the city streets. What it took me until that moment to realize was that it was also quite possible to find yourself in that same loud thrum, to become alive to yourself only when surrounded by countless others."
Andy Greenwald, Miss Misery

Autumn in New York

Coventry Garden

"This autumn in New York
Transforms the slums into Mayfair
Autumn in New York
You'll need no castles in Spain."
Vernon Duke,  Autumn in New York

Never Quiet

Freeman Alley

"New York City is never quiet. There are corners of stillness, streets empty for minutes at a time, but then the peace ends. People chatter, sing, cry out."
Siri Hustvedt, The Blindfold

The Best University

Columbia University

"I contend that a great city is the best university -- that no matter what college you took your degree at, New York is in itself a post-graduate course."
Brander Matthews, A Confident To-Morrow

Magical Island

"The sun was long gone from the sky and a blanket of reassuring darkness had been tucked over New York, with the newly lit Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building acting like giant nightlights, keeping everyone safe. It looks so completely different, this magical island out there on its own, defiantly sparkling away."   
Lindsey Kelk, I Heart New York

Unhappy Endings

Eldridge Street

"This is New York City. The only happy endings are in Chinatown."
Beth Vest (Alexis Bledel), The Good Guy

Love Affair

Abingdon Square

"Long before I married New York City, I had a passionate love affair with the place."
Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies

Borderline Lunacy

Broome Street

"New Yorkers do not amble, do not meander, and do not hesitate. Nor do they pay much attention to the world around them. New Yorkers are that way of necessity. To preserve a modicum of sanity in a city of borderline lunacy, they learn to screen out Manhattan's nerve-racking sights and sounds."
Joseph R. Garber, Rascal Money

Post Ivy League Destination

Columbia College

"When you graduate from an Ivy League college and your chances of a career in politics have already been dashed by drug experimentation and unpaid parking tickets, New York is the only place people really move to."
Francesca Delbanco, Ask Me Anything

Stamp of Approval

The seal of the City of New York

"In my country, America, I mean, from a time almost ancient we have looked to New York for the stamp of her approval."
Opie Read, An American in New York

I Miss NY

Central Park bench

"I miss New York. I always miss New York when I leave. I often miss New York before I've left."
Lily Brett, New York

Just Poor

Chelsea

"In a state like Minnesota or Wisconsin you can be poor and still feel some sense of dignity if you work hard and live fairly cleanly and you keep your eye on the future. But here in New York it seemed as if when you're poor you're just poor. And that means you're nobody. Really nobody."
Robert M. Pirsig, Lila

Everything but a Past

Columbus Circle

"New York has absolutely everything today except a past."
Louis Auchincloss, Louis Auchincloss: A Writer's Life

Hole in the Sky

National September 11 Memorial

"It was impossible to believe that such a small-seeming foundation could have held up such buildings; impossible to believe that such a space could have contained all their wreckage. But the hole in the sky was just their size, their image filled it exactly, the blueness of that clear day closed around it."
Kirsten Tranter, The Legacy

Fashion Week

"Every year the women of New York leave the past behind and look forward to the future... this is known as Fashion Week."
Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), Sex and the City: The Movie 

Any Minute, Any Day, Any Month

Fifth Avenue Clock

"I still believed in possibilities then, still had the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month."
Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Diversity Unified

Empire State Building seen from Chelsea

"Brownstones, water towers, trees, skyscrapers
Writers, prize fighters and Wall Street traders
We come together on the subway cars
Diversity unified, whoever you are."
Beastie Boys, An Open Letter to NYC

Flimsy Mirage

West 57th Street

"New York, a dreamscape of opportunity, often presented a flimsy mirage. Large houses rose around a sudden fortune then disappeared in half a decade, blown away like stage props."
Ellen Horan, 31 Bond Street

Endless Summer

Times Square

"In Forty-second Street it is a glowing summer afternoon all night: one might almost wear white trousers and straw hat."

Paul Morand, New York

Hate as an Art Form

Rivington Street

"It is an art form to hate New York City properly. So far I have always been a featherweight debunker of New York; it takes too much energy and endurance to record the infinite number of ways the city offends me."
Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

New York Sky

Upper West Side

"The sky in New York is so close you can carry it on your back. Dusk falls earlier, grayer, with no prospects, no hope."
Judy Reene Singer, An Inconvenient Elephant

Marvelous Machine

Midtown Manhattan

"New York City is a marvelous machine filled with a mesh of levers and gears and springs, like a fine watch, wound tight. Always ticking."
Bertram Cooper (Robert Morse), Mad Men

Nowhere Better in the World

"There was, of course, nowhere better in the world to be than New York City."
Jonathan Franzen, Freedom

Belongs to the Whole Country

Sign at Grant's Tomb

"There's only one city that belongs to the whole country, and that's New York."
William Dean Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes