New York on New Year's Eve

"Nothing beats New York on New Year's Eve."
Stan Harris (Robert DeNiro), New Year's Eve

Upgrade

Downtown Manhattan

"New York is a good place to be on the up-grade."
Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz

The Whole World Revolves Around New York

United Nations General Assembly

"The whole world revolves around New York, especially my world. Very little happens anywhere unless someone in New York presses a button!"
Duke Ellington, Music is My Mistress

Holiday Season in New York

New York Stock Exchange

"The holiday season in New York is magical, its shadowed, gray avenues suddenly burst into a Disney-like Technicolor, transforming even the most belligerent into bell-ringers."

Clay Cole, Sh-Boom!

Land of Opportunity

Rockefeller Center

"Here we are Marv. New York City, the land of opportunity."
Harry (Joe Pesci), Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

Always Different

West Chelsea

"By day and by night the look of New York is different. You can stay there 10 years and never see the same thing the same way twice."
Sammy Davis Jr,  Popular Mechanics

Christmas

Bryant Park

"Christmas in New York is as multicolored and as whimsical as a July fiesta in Mexico."
Robert L. Wallace, Soul Food

Orgy of Capitalism

Rockefeller Center

"New York is a city that loves Christmas. It's their spiritual holiday—being, as it is, an orgy of capitalism—and they spare no effort or expense getting the city in shape."
Michael Harling, Postcards From Across The Pond

The Eve of Christmas Eve

Jefferson Market Garden

"This is what happens every year on the eve of Christmas eve. Most people leave Manhattan to go 'home,' whatever that may mean, or maybe to be anywhere else but here. The effect is a muffling of sound, as if all the distinct noises of New York, its sirens, its taxi horns, its footsteps, are being smothered by a large blanket."
Julie Buxbaum, The Opposite of Love

Fulfilling Dreams

Whitehall Staten Island ferry station

"New York is a city where everyone has come to fulfill their dreams --sometimes the dream is simply to be here."
Alan Cumming, Tommy's Tale

New York Time

Soñando New York at Times Square

"One night in New York is like a month in St. Louis time."

Nancy Frankenburg (Gina Gershon), How to Make It In America

Paradise of Renewal

Hudson Yards

"You know how New York is. I don't need to list its qualities. It is the city of the dead. The noise of the crowds overwhelms the introspective mind. But in its incessant destruction of the old, it is a strange paradise of renewal."
Nathaniel Rich, Mayor's Tongue

Interviewed or Arrested

Free hugs on Union Square

"Half the people in New York if they were anywhere else would be either interviewed or arrested."
Edmund White, City Boy

Poverty in the Midst of Affluence

Fifth Avenue

"I love New York, but it is still the injustice, the poverty and suffering of so many in the midst of affluence that I see most. I can't help it, it hammers on my soul every day."
Manoucher Parvin, Cry for My Revolution, Iran

Potentiality of America

Times Square

"New York is not America, but a potentiality of America, perhaps its most intense one."
François Weill, A History of New York

Tensile Excitement

Roosevelt Island Tram

"There was, rather, a tensile excitement in that air which made one think — made me think for many years — that time spent asleep in New York was somehow time wasted."
Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22

Beautiful Harbor

South Street Seaport

"My imagination is incapable of conceiving any thing of the kind more beautiful than the harbour of New York."
Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans 

Hope

Madison Square Park fountain

"What New York represents, perfectly and consistently, in literature and life alike, is the idea of Hope. Hope for a new life, for something big to happen, hope for a better life or a bigger apartment."
Adam Gopnik, Through the Children's Gate

The Future Auditions

New York World's Fair New York State Pavilion

"New York is where the future comes to audition."
Ed Koch, The Little Red Book of New York Wisdom

Same York

59th Street subway station

"lt's New York. Nothing is really new. They should change the name to 'Same York.'"
Samantha  Jones (Kim Cattrall), Sex and the City

Sheds its Skins

Financial District

"New York is a city that sheds its skins incredibly quickly."

Ethan Wolff, Frommer's Irreverent Guide to Manhattan 

The Fullest Graveyard

"I'd never been to the Big Apple. Looking out the car windows during our drive into the city, my first impression was of the fullest graveyard I'd ever seen. It was packed, no room left. Where did they put the new bodies?"
Ginger "Sugar" Blymyer, Hairdresser to the Stars

Up to Speed

Fifth Avenue

"If New Yorkers are anything, they are 'up to speed.' In New York you can have a fascinating conversation with anyone you meet, from the street panhandler trying to sell you an original poem to the hot dog vendor, waiter, doorman, cabbie, shop owner, or even the person crammed in next to you on the packed subway. And not only are they all in the know, but they know they are in the know, and they are strongly opinionated about what they know."
Michael S. Durham, National Geographic Traveler

Sexy Lover

"New York is a dangerous, sexy lover, out on the town, dancing the night away, and drinking you under the table."
Howard Jordan Jr., 101 Reasons to Leave New York

Grand Canyon

"New York City is as amazing in its own way as the Grand Canyon. As a matter of fact, you can't help thinking that maybe Nature would have made New York City look the way it does if it had had the money and the know-how."
Andy Rooney, Andy Rooney: 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit

On the Verge of Greatness and Disaster

Tobacco Warehouse and Brooklyn Bridge

"New York was always on the verge of greatness, always at the edge of disaster, and only booster will could turn the balance."
David M. Scobey, Empire City

The Movies

Jason Sudeikis and Alison Brie filming "Sleeping with Other People"

"It all looks so much better in the movies. You see the tall, high buildings, and you don't see the dirty little brownstone houses, with the ragged washing hanging out their windows. You see New York's smart exterior without seeing her shabby underwear."

C.V.R. Thompson, I Lost My English Accent

Provincial New Yorkers

"Many New Yorkers are provincial, earnestly believing that life ceases west of the Hudson River, except for the occasional squeak to be noticed from Los Angeles. London has its theatre, Paris its fashion, Rome its pope, but New Yorkers truly believe their city is bigger or better or smarter or more sophisticated, or, in the case of the Catholic Church, more Catholic."
S.B. Howard, Strange But True: New York City

Jagged Mountain Range

"New York is like that -- like some jagged mountain range, dizzy heights of extravagant wealth soaring right next to murky depths of depraved poverty, each seeming all the more extreme by the sudden contrast to its Opposite."
Natalie Wexler, A More Obedient Wife

New York Action

East Village

"More happens on any given day in a closet in New York than in an entire city anyplace in America."
Janet Neipris, The Best Short Plays - 1986 

From Somewhere to Nowhere

George Washington Bridge

"My goodness, I miss New York. I miss it almost everyday and I definitely miss it right now. I can't really think of a particularly articulate way to put it. You know what I'm talking about, though. It's the sheer volume and rush and energy, the inescapable feeling that something is going on. I remember leaving NYC so clearly, thinking that I was going from somewhere to nowhere."
Matt Hern, Common Ground in a Liquid City