Leadership

Dino Eli Gallery

"New York's leaders are aristocrats who have never labored, or political hacks who have conned or schemed their way up."
Dennis Smith, Report From Engine Co. 82

Foreignness

Little Italy

"The chief pleasure of their life in New York was from its quality of foreignness."
William Dean Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes

Manhattan is a Cocktail

"Everyone knows Manhattan is a cocktail. Literally, it is a mix of rye and sweet vermouth, garnished with a cherry, with its golden-brown glow and submerged bar-fruit sunset. Figuratively, it is the shaken-not-stirred mix of its people, occupations, desires and commodities: the constant movement and interchange, the ceaseless transactions of discourse, flesh, food, ideas and bodily fluids."
Mark Kingwell, Concrete Reveries

Broadway's State of Mind

"If Broadway is a 'state of mind,' as some phrase inventor put it, a clinical psychiatrist should diagnose it. He might isolate the precise form of dementia which drives this wacky world of fancy, flesh, piracy, pruriency and pure poesy."
Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer, New York Confidential

Square Foot

Walter Kerr Theatre

"Better a square foot of New York than all the rest of the world in a lump — better a lamppost on Broadway than the brightest star in the sky."
Texas Guinan, Texas Guinan: Queen of the Night Clubs

Hyperbole and Grandeur

Grand Central Terminal

"New York, thy name is irreverence and hyperbole. And grandeur."
Ada Louise Huxtable, Kicked A Building Lately?

The Most Wonderful City

"New York! I've always wanted to see it and now I've seen it. It's true what they say — it's the most wonderful city in the world."
Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn 

Heaven or NYC

Riverside Park South

"She dreamed, lulled by the train, of getting off at heaven or New York City, whichever she got to first."
Mary Lee Settle, The Scapegoat

Genius

Nikola Tesla bust

"New York has become the Florence of the sixteenth century. Genius in every corner."
John Guare, Six Degrees of Separation

Rome

Governors Island

"If I'd lived in Roman times, I'd have lived in Rome. Where else? Today America is the Roman Empire and New York is Rome itself."
John Lennon, John Lennon in His Own Words

The Greatest Party in the World

East 25th Street

"Let's hit the greatest party in the world -- the streets of New York!"
Jerry (John Lithgow), How I Met Your Mother

Not a Cure for Loneliness

Empire State Building

"I could never love New York again. It's not a city to cure loneliness. And what I needed most was to belong. Somewhere."

Eric Segal, Oliver's Story

Lack of Urbanity

Cooper Square

"URBANITY, n. The kind of civility that urban observers ascribe to dwellers in all cities but New York. Its commonest expression is heard in the words, "I beg your pardon," and it is not consistent with disregard of the rights of others."
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Promise and Potential

Central Park

 "New York represents promise and potential. It's a city of remarkable diversity and relentless optimism, brimming with opportunity and confidence, where the great American ideal of egalitarianism is still very much alive and well."
Mike Colameco, Mike Colameco's Food Lover's Guide to New York City

Bagels and Bullets

Equinox Fitness club

"I can be a true New Yorker. I'll go to the gym, and then I'll eat a bagel, and then... I'll shoot someone, maybe?"
Sophie Kinsella, Shopaholic Takes Manhattan

Himalayas of Cityscapes

Manhattan Skyline

"Manhattan's skyline is famously jagged and vertiginous, the Himalayas of cityscapes."
David Howard, Outside Magazine's Urban Adventure: New York City

A Funny Place

West 42nd

"What makes New York such a funny place is that there’s so much tension and pain and misery and craziness here. And that’s the first part of comedy. But you’ve got to get some distance from it."
Lester (Alan Alda), Crimes and Misdemeanors

The Center of the Universe

40th and 10th

"It was humanity on full display: pimples, sweat, love, heartbreak, addiction, brilliance, despair, and bliss. It was terrifying, but it was genuine and without pretense. There was no doubt that when you stood with both feet in NYC you were in the center of the universe."
Ethan Hawke, New York's Unique and Unexpected Places

Looking Only at Manhattan

"He could be Jesus Christ in Sydney, yet even in the era of the Global Village he was nothing in New York, not until he'd worked his miracles in Manhattan, which was as far as most New Yorkers ever cared to look."
Claire Messud, The Emperor's Children

Moral Suasion

The New York Times building

"This is New York City, babe, and moral suasion is found only on the op-ed page of the Times."
Judith Krantz, I'll Take Manhattan

Money on the Mind

Bank of America Tower

"New York, you got money on your mind
And my words won't make a dime's worth a difference
So Here's to you New York."
Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, A Heart In New York

Loss

Penn Station

"There was no point, I thought, in permanently bemoaning change. This was New York. Loss was part of the deal."
Pete Hamill, Downtown

Asparagus Bed

South Street Seaport

"After twenty annual visits, I am still surprised each time to return to see this giant asparagus bed of alabaster and rose and green skyscrapers."
Cecil Beaton, It Gives Me Great Pleasure

Exercise for Anyone Who Wants to Move to New York

"It would be a great exercise for someone who thinks they want to move to New York. Sit in an enclosed space full of fumes and hold hands with a stranger for twenty minutes while everyone around you speaks a language you don't understand. If you enjoy this, you will enjoy the 6 train."
Tina Fey, Bossypants

Mythic Borough

Brooklyn

"Of all the boroughs, Brooklyn is the most individualistic, the most mythic, and the most complex."
Christiane Bird, Moon New York State

Purgatory

Times Square

"There are some who would say with passion that the only real advantage of living in New York is that all its residents ascend to heaven directly after their deaths, having served their full term in purgatory right on Manhattan island."
Alexander Klein, Empire City

Possible Disasters

Emergency Communications System at Madison Square Garden

"Manhattan is an accumulation of possible disasters that never happen."
Rem Koolhaas,  Delirious New York

Shrine of the Good Time

Sightseeing cruise on the Hudson River

"For most visitors to Manhattan, both foreign and domestic, New York is the Shrine of the Good Time. This is only natural, for outsiders come to New York for the sole purpose of having a good time, and it is for their New York hosts to provide it. The visiting Englishman, or the visiting Californian, is convinced that New York is made up of millions of gay pixies, flittering about constantly in a sophisticated manner in search of a new thrill. 'I don't see how you stand it,' they often say to the native New Yorker who has been sitting up past his bedtime for a week in an attempt to tire his guest out."
Robert Benchley, The Benchley Roundup

Camping Out

Tent at Columbia University

"If you are not in New York, you are camping out."
Thomas Dewing, quoted in The American Artist and His Times

Off the Coast of America

The East River

"I fled New England and came to Manhattan, that island off the coast of America, where human nature was king and everyone exuded character and had big attitude."
Spalding Gray, Life Interrupted