Open to the Universe

The High Line

"New York is a point in space, on the planet, which is totally open to the rest of the universe. New York is not the city, it is only a geographical point that is open to the universe, to the world."
Paul-Émile Borduas, Paul-Émile Borduas

Materialist

Macy's

"New York is the materialist place in our country."
Charles Loring Brace, The Life of Charles Loring Brace

Powerful Magnet

Times Square Visitors Center

"New York is also a magnet. A powerful magnet. Every nut, psycho and fanatic with an agenda and poor personal hygiene is attracted to the five boroughs -- its pace, its zaniness, and its virtual anonymity."
Samuel M. Katz, Anytime Anywhere

Theatrical

The Public Theater

"New York is so wonderfully theatrical. It's an enormous stage where people accidentally run into each other all the time."
Christopher Bram, Something Inside

Jewish

Governor Andrew Cuomo at the Celebrate Israel Parade

"It doesn't matter even if you're Catholic; if you live in New York you're Jewish."
Lenny Bruce, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People

Dream of Power

Manhattan Municipal Building

"New York is a city that never awakens from its long, strange dream of power. They call it the city of dreams, after all; never citing, or minding, the contradiction."
John Skipp and Craig Spector, Dead Lines

Miniature World

The Great Lawn and Turtle Pond

"Central Park was a miniature world filled with wonders one would never guess could be found in a rectangle of trees and grassy lawns rolled out into the center of a city made of concrete and steel."
Linda Francis Lee, Emily and Einstein

New York Money

The Frick Collection

"New York, a city where money counts for more and goes for less than in any other city of the world."
William Dean Howells, Literary Friends and Acquaintances

Old City

Morris-Jumel Mansion

"When I look at Manhattan, I see one of the most beautiful places in the world. Some have critiqued it for being an 'old city,' but that's precisely why I love it. The richness of the buildings, the touch of old brownstones... there's just nothing like it, no better way to remind yourself of all the people who have walked before you."
Jedediah Bila, Outnumbered

The Unreal World

DUMBO

"Some people lived in the real world and others lived in Brooklyn."
Suzanne Corso, Brooklyn Story

Hollywood

Sixth Avenue

"If New York didn't exist, Hollywood would've had to invent it to get the perfect movie set."
Holly Hughes, Frommer's New York City with Kids

The Constant is Change

Greenwich Street

"Change was the one constant in New York; every morning you woke to a slightly different city. It was the source of its greatness and its grinding cost."
Justin Peacock, Blind Man's Alley

Rediscovering Life

Charles A. Dana Discovery Center

"Living in New York is like discovering life all over again. In all seriousness, living here has been like waking up in an endlessly fascinating and completely different world from everything I've ever known."
Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway

Three O'Clock

Macy's

"When it's 3 o'clock in New York, its 1938 in Britain."
Bette Midler, The Divine Bette Midler

Grace and Swagger

Midtown

"That skyline -- the apotheosis of New York's grace and swagger, creativity and hard labor-- is lovelier to me than the most serene sunset or snowcapped mountain range."
Maureen Corrigan, Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading

Environmental Responsibility

Prince St.

"Most Americans, including most New Yorkers, think of New York City as an ecological nightmare, a wasteland of concrete and garbage and diesel fumes and traffic jams, but in comparison with the rest of America it's a model of environmental responsibility."
Matt Hern, Common Ground in a Liquid City

Gruesome Portrait

"Private Passage" at Clinton Cove Park

"New York is a city that fears, yet embraces its own reflection. A gruesome portrait of decay, mortality, failure, fraud, whose caricatures are trapped inside a negatively charged environment whose collective scream is drowned out by the next drink, the next drug, the next lousy fuck."
Lydia Lunch, Paradoxia

On the Way to the Subway

Atlantic Avenue Barclays Center subway station

"New York is the kind of place where 10 things happen to you every day on the way to the subway that would have qualified as interesting dinner conversation in Bloomington, Indiana, and you don't pay them any notice."
Joel Spolsky, The Best Software Writing I

Mother, Mistress, Mecca

Brooklyn Heights Promenade

"There was a time when New York was everything to me: my mother, my mistress, my Mecca."
Harvey Swados, Nights in the Gardens of Brooklyn

Before

Elizabeth Street

"You're a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now."
Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York

Fashion and Covetousness

Fashion Avenue

"If thou fill thy brain with Boston and New York, with fashion and covetousness, and wilt stimulate thy jaded senses with wine and French coffee, thou shalt find no radiance of wisdom in the lonely waste of the pinewoods."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays

Second Birthday

Riverside Park South

We've entered the terrible twos! To celebrate, here are ten of our favorite quotes from the past year.

10. "Half the people in New York if they were anywhere else would be either interviewed or arrested."

Edmund White, City Boy

9. "New York is a city where there is no room for amateurs, even in crossing the street."

George Segal, quoted in Comedy Techniques for Writers and Performers

8. "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

7. "That's what I love about New York City — it's always being reborn, it's always reinventing itself. And demands the same of you — that you keep readjusting to time."

John Guare, Landscape of the Body

6. "New York City is America—dynamic, maybe brutal, but always aspiring towards the higher, the better, the impossible."

Van Dinh Tran, Blue Dragon, White Tiger

5. "Being in New York is like falling in love over and over again."

Rachel Berry (Lea Michele), Glee

4. "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

3. "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

2. "There's a swell when you first see Manhattan. It's true, you think, the skyline is not a mirage, and you can be inside of it, naked in that gold light."

John Weir, What I Did Wrong

1. "This is not a city. This is a world with whole countries in it."

Ann-Marie MacDonald, Fall On Your Knees

What's your favorite?

Anonymity

Apple Store

"The crowd in New York bestows on the people it comprises a blessed anonymity. New Yorkers are protected from the necessity of being individuals when being one serves no purpose."
Andy Rooney, Andy Rooney: 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit

Arrogant

Seagram Building

"New York is an arrogant city; it has always wanted to be all things to all people, and a surprising amount of the time it has succeeded."
Paul Goldberger, The City Observed: New York

The Quintessential City

Lincoln Center

"New York has always been the quintessential city: culturally, ethnically, and economically mixed, exciting and chaotic, elusive and spontaneous, sophisticated and endlessly creative."
Jerilou Hammett and Kingsley H. Hammett, Suburbanization of New York

A Whole Amazing World

Chatham Square

"I have found something past the granite ocean. It's a whole amazing world. You can walk for an hour and never hear a word of English, you can eat in five different countries in five blocks."
Ann-Marie MacDonald, Fall on Your Knees

Disgusting and Wonderful

Prince Street

"I miss New York and all the places and everyone and everything and especially the Lower East Side, it was it was so disgusting, so wonderful."
Colum McCann, Dancer

Dawn

West 110th Street

"Dawn in Manhattan is magical. The sunlight on the storefronts looks like an Edward Hopper—if someone installed ugly, graffiti-covered metal gates on the windows."
Bob Smith, Openly Bob

Lover or Hater

East Houston

"New York is not like London, a now-and-then place to many people. You can either not live in New York or not live anyplace else. One is either a lover or hater."
Amanda Cross, A Trap for Fools

A Wonderland of Speculation

West Chelsea

"Manhattan is a wonderland of real estate speculation, a hot center whose temperature cannot but increase as population increases and desirability remains several places ahead of capacity."
Luc Sante, Low Life

NY Faces

Great Lawn

“The faces in New York remind me of people who played a game and lost”.
Murray Kempton, quoted in New York Politics: A Tale of Two States