Pressure

Riverside Park South

"I have lived in New York long enough to feel a deep modification in the atmosphere, to feel the absurdity of the pressure the city exerts."
William Styron, Conversations with William Styron

Safe Deliveries

Delivery bikes in Kips Bay

"You're in New York City. Why go out and risk your life when everything's delivered?"
Elinor Lipman, The Family Man

New York Dogs

Signs at St. John the Divine

"New York was the only city I'd ever encountered that moved more than I did. Nothing sat still. Nothing rested. Not even the dogs were allowed to be lazy. Instead they were shuffled outside for "walks" by anxious owners wielding plastic bags, waiting impatiently for their precious pups to poop so they could move on to that meeting they always seemed to be late for."
Angie Day, The Way to Somewhere

Sepia

Promenade at the World Financial Center

"New York is always in sepia tones."
John Rechy, Bodies and Souls

The Yarn of Our Dreams

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir

"New York is not a city of dreams, it is a city built by us, dreamers. As we dream, we are pressed against the ground, that is why our city has grown so far into the sky. Manhattan is the yarn of our dreams."
Dubravka Ugrešić, Have a Nice Day

Everyone is Gay

Flag on West 14th

"Everyone in New York is gay."
Paul Rudnick, Social Disease

Money

One Central Park

"This New York was so different from the city in which he'd grown up. Manhattan was all about money now, all about trying to make enough of it just to survive."
Adam Langer, The Thieves of Manhattan

Only Promises

Central Park

"New York City, like the country it's in, is a place that promises you everything but gives you nothing."
Ernesto Quinonez, Chango's Fire

The Sun

Gantry Plaza State Park

"Helsinki was a chill planet on the distant edge of things. New York was the sun."
Richard Rayner, The Cloud Sketcher

The Most Irritating Thing

"The most irritating thing of all is that New Yorkers really don't care what you say about their city. "
Russell Baker, There's a Country in My Cellar

The Most Horrible Place

Bleecker Street

"I felt as I had always felt about New York  — that it is the most horrible place on God's earth. No matter how many times I escape I am brought back, like a runaway slave, each time detesting it, loathing it, more and more."
Henry Miller, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, Vol 1

Decadent

Prometheus statue

"I think New York is -- well, decadent is the only word for it."
Brian Moore, I Am Mary Dunne

The Decider

Wall Street

"New York was the most important city in the world, the center of management and finance for all the economies of the global village. Japan might build the automobiles. England might sew the suits. And maybe the Pacific Rim would eventually produce all the electronics. But it was New York that decided what would be produced and raised the money to build the factory."
Diana Diamond, The Trophy Wife

Nature and the City

Riverside Park and Drive

"Nature and New York City have a lot in common. Both are absolutely indifferent to the human condition."
Andy Rooney, Andy Rooney: 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit

Brutal, Ugly, Frightening

"In the thirties New York was not merely the vital metropolis, brimming with politics and contention, that has since become a sentimental legend; it was also brutal, ugly, frightening."
Irving Howe, The New York Intellectuals Reader

Idol-Head with Traffic-Light Eyes

Bowery

"It is a myth, the city, the rooms and windows, the steam-spitting streets; for anyone, everyone, a different myth, an idol-head with traffic-light eyes winking a tender green, a cynical red. This island, floating in river water like a diamond iceberg."

Truman Capote, Portraits and Observations

Hick Town

12th Avenue

"We looked at New York as two things: one was, of course, the Big Apple, and the other was the world’s biggest hick town."
David Mamet, David Mamet in Conversation

Why I Came to New York

Times Square

"I came to New York because I thought it was the center of the universe and wanted to be in the middle of it all."
Alex McCord, Little Kids, Big City

Crucible of Culture

Columbia University

"New York has always been a 'crucible of culture,' a meeting place of the old and the new, a catalytic agent necessary to transform a new world into America."
George J. Lankevich, New York City

Fatally Fascinating

Downtown Manhattan

"New York City is the most fatally fascinating thing in America. She sits like a great witch at the gate of the country, showing her alluring white face and hiding her crooked hands and feet under the folds of her wide garments-constantly enticing thousands from far within and tempting those who came from across the seas to go no farther."

James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man 

Beginning of the World

Central Park West

"New York had all the iridescence of the beginning of the world."
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up

Nobody

A service entrance in The Village

"The hardest thing to be in the New York is a nobody, and the town is full of them."
Charlie LeDuff, Work and Other Sins

Cosmopolitan Living

Park Avenue

"If you are going to live on this continent at all, New York is the only place where a cosmopolitan can live."
Mary Clemmer, Victoire

Dream and Reality

Manhattan Bridge

"Manhattan is the dream, Brooklyn is the reality."
Marc Eliot, Song of Brooklyn

Virtue and Vice

Second Avenue

"What passes as virtue in Kansas is regarded as intolerable vice in New York, and vice versa."
H.L. Mencken, A Second Mencken Chrestomathy

A Dream of a Song

The Atrium at Citigroup Center

"Amid all her tickertape and traffic, New York is the dream of a song."
Duke Ellington, Music is My Mistress

Brazen New Yorkers

Literary Walk

"I am still so amazed at the brazenness of people — completely New York people — who only remember you when you've gone into your fourth printing." 
Dawn Powell,  The Diaries of Dawn Powell: 1931-1965

Naked Streets

Eighth Avenue

"The New York street strips us naked, sometimes in the midst of people we may not want to be naked with. But it strips them naked, too."
Marshall Berman and Brian Berger, New York Calling

A Different Kind of Jungle

Times Square

"This is a different jungle and Manhattan is not for the unshelled slug."
Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Krauss, Nanny Returns

Overgrown

One Chase Manhattan Plaza

"The city of New York is so overgrown that we in the upper regions do not know much more of what is passing in the lower, nor the things which are to be seen there, than the inhabitants of Mexico and Cairo."
Philip Hone, The Diary of Philip Hone 1828-1851