Awe-Inspiring

Empire State Buiding

"New York was a city that showed off its greatness, sought to make tourists look at man's accomplishments with awe."
Kristin Hannah, Home Front

Far from Nature's Intention

Bowery

"New York is a city that does not plan; it creates situations and then deals with them. Most of its history is one of greedily grabbing beautiful things, destroying them, being outraged about the conditions, tearing them down, then building something else even further from nature's intention in their place."
Mark Kurlansky, The Big Oyster

Implausible

Ripley's Believe it or Not! Odditorium

"Trying to explain New York expansively is not plausible, because nothing about it is plausible. New York is a city so alive it vibrates even when it sleeps, which is rarely, if ever."

Bert Randolph Sugar, The Ultimate Book of New York Lists

The Start of a New Adventure

New York Public Library

"Every day in New York seemed to be the start of a new adventure, and although I missed home a little, so little I was ashamed of it, I was thrilled when I woke up every morning in my little bed under the eaves in the attic on Twelfth Street and felt such gratitude just to be able breathe that electric New York air."
Norris Church Mailer, Cheap Diamonds

Vertical City

New York by Gehry and Woolworth Building

"New York a vertical city. People come with the idea of the metaphorical ascent — in career, fortune, lifestyle."
David Howard, Outside Magazine's Urban Adventure: New York City 

Unique City

Salvation Army

"No city responds more promptly and generously to the call for help, whether it come from another American city, or from famine stricken peoples in Europe or Asia. In her charities, as in her hotels, apartment houses, and luxurious residences, New York is unique among the great cities of the world."

Robert S. MacArthur, Church federation, Inter-church Conference on Federation

The Problem with New York

7-9 East 72nd

"That was the problem with New York: No matter how successful you thought you were, there was always someone who was richer, more successful, more famous... the idea of it was sometimes enough to make you want to give up."
Candace Bushnell, Trading Up

Unearthy Fantasia

Staten Island Ferry 

"The skyline of Manhattan soars into view, its towers and citadels shooting skyward in anarchic and bewildering profusion, overwhelming in their sense of power and their gargantuan beauty, looking more than ever like some unearthly fantasia out of a fairy tale. It is the one urban view in all the world which sings at a journey's end like a public triumph."
Clair Price, quoted in Empire State Building

Almost Paradise

Chrysler Building

"If it weren't for the weather, Manhattan Isle would be all the paradise I'm looking for — or ever hope to see!"
William Carey Wonderly, The World to Live in

Loneliness of the Human Condition

East River Park

"There's something about New York that underscores the loneliness of the human condition in a way other places don't."
Lauren Lipton, It's About Your Husband

Stands Apart from Other Capitals

Sara D. Roosevelt Park

"New York stands apart from the other great capitals --London, Paris, Tokyo, and add as many more as you wish-- in that its population diverges sharply from the nation of which it is the largest and chief city."
Martin Shefter, Capital of the American Century

World Tour

A segment of the Berlin Wall in Midtown Manhattan

"One of the nice things about New York is that you can tour the world without ever leaving town."
Bill Harris and Jorg Brockmann, Five Hundred Buildings of New York

Multiple Personalities

World Financial Center

"New York is not like other towns in some things. It has been Dutch, and it has been English, and it has been American, and there is no telling what it is now; but it has had more characters than any other living city."
William Osborn Stoddard, The Volcano Under the City

Egypt

Temple of Dendur

"New York, you're an Egypt! But an Egypt turned inside out. For she erected pyramids of slavery to death, and you erect pyramids of democracy with the vertical organ-pipes of your skyscrapers all meeting at the point of infinity of liberty!"
Salvador Dali, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali

My Country

NYC flag

"New York is my country."
María Irene Fornés, Conducting a Life

Floating World

East River

"Manhattan is a floating world, too: buoyant as balsa, heavy as granite. The reason skyscrapers developed so easily on this spit of earth, I once heard, is that its foundation stone was strong enough to take any amount of drilling. You can still bruise your ego against Manhattan's rocky cheek."
Philip Lopate, The Place Within

Heartless

Port Authority

"This is New York City ladies and gentlemen; the most exciting city on earth. Except that is, unless you are poor, and then buddy it is the loneliest and most heartless, Godless place in the world."
David Lee, Nothing Rhymes with Silver 2

Somebody is Watching

Surveillance cameras on East 23rd

"Manhattan is a pretty small place itself, albeit much more fabulous than wherever you came from. No matter what you do, and no matter where you are, somebody is watching."
Cecily Von Ziegesar, Tempted

Rewards Beyond Your Wildest Dreams

Williamsburg waterfront

"New York is like that. It is brilliant and glittering and hard and ruthless, and a terrible cheat and a liar, but it is also full of tender little surprises, and when it's in a giving mood, it has a lot to give. If you play your cards right, and you sweat a lot, and you pay your dues, the rewards are not sometimes, but often, beyond your wildest dreams."
Lillian Roxon, Lillian Roxon: Mother of Rock

Nothing Like It

Jazz at Lincoln Center

"There has never been anything like New York on the face of planet Earth. They can say what they want about ancient Rome, but it wasn't like this."
Wynton Marsalis, My City, My New York

Manhattan Smell

Madison Square Park

"Manhattan smells like a mix of urine and dog shit. I miss New York like I would miss my brain tumor."
Edwin F. Becker, The Eleventh Commandment

Even the Trees Have to Hustle

Bowery

"If you lived in Canada you might have a million trees making oxygen for you alone, so each of those trees isn't working that hard. Whereas a tree in a treepot in Times Square has to make oxygen for a million people. In New York you really do have to hustle, and the trees know this, too."
Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

Dead City

St. Paul's Churchyard

"New York is a dead city. A vast pile of giant tombstones. Someone has called it the catacomb of America."
Jean Toomer, A Jean Toomer Reader

Greatest and Toughest City

Central Park South seen from Central Park

"New York is the greatest city in the world. It's also the toughest.  The city is expensive, overcrowded, fast-paced, brusque... all the things that people who have lived here for any length of time ostensibly come to love."
Craig Wroe, An Actor Prepares to Work in New York City

New York Apartments

164 East 37th Street

"What he calls home would look like a couple of closets to most Americans, yet the New Yorker manages not only to live there but also to grow trees and cockroaches right on the premises."
Russell Baker, So This Is Depravity and Other Observations

Universe

South Street Seaport

"New York is a universe: true New Yorkers might suspect the existence of other places, but do not quite believe in them."
Andrei Codrescu, Hail Babylon!

Babylonian Proportions

Midtown West

"You have to know how to use the magic of New York, how to swim in its Babylonian proportions. I love it. It's made for great swoops and daring and for hope in life."
Anaïs Nin, A Literate Passion

A World

Rockefeller Center

"This is not a city. This is a world with whole countries in it."
Ann-Marie MacDonald, Fall On Your Knees 

Assholes

Trump Store

"Concerning LA. versus New York: I have now lived half my life in each of America's two most hated, feared, and envied cities, and you want to know something? There's no comparison. New York even has a better class of assholes."
George Carlin, Brain Droppings

A Verb

JFK Airport

"Most cities are nouns; New York's a verb."
John F. Kennedy, quoted in Native's Guide to New York

New Year's Day in New York

New Year's Eve Centennial Ball

"New Year's Day in New York is one of the best days of our western year. It is an Independence day on which we rejoice to acknowledge our mutual dependence on one another -- a sort of universal birthday, and everybody's fête."
Putnam's Monthly, Volume 9