Sunday, March 31, 2013

Wonderful and Brutal

West Broadway

"New York is so different and so sort of relentless you have to be up for it if you're going to be there, whether you're ready for it or not. It's a brutal place. It's a wonderful place, but it is brutal."
Jessica Hagedorn, The Asian Pacific American Heritage

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Kansas

Central Park

"New York is just like Kansas... intensified."
Brantley Foster (Michael J. Fox), The Secret of My Success

Friday, March 29, 2013

Devouring City

Greenwich St.

"New York devours people, leaving merely the husks; then it kills them."
Paul Morand, New York

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Homesick

Statue of Liberty and Manhattan skyline

"New York does nothing for those of us who are inclined to love her except implant in our hearts a homesickness that baffles us until we go away from her, and then we realize why we are restless. At home or away, we are homesick for New York not because New York used to be better and not because she used to be worse but because the city holds us and we don't know why."
Maeve Brennan, The Long-Winded Lady

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Setting for Drama

West 45th St.

"New York is a setting for a drama that is being played, a spectacle which is being rehearsed."
Stephen Graham, New York Nights

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Health Reasons

Health center in the Upper West Side

"I moved to New York for health reasons. I'm paranoid and New York is the only place where my fears are justified."
Anita Weiss, quoted in Words from the Wise

Monday, March 25, 2013

Cookware

Rivington St.

"Not only is New York the nation's melting pot, it is also the casserole, the chafing dish and the charcoal grill."
John Lindsay, quoted in New York Yesterday & Today

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Unsurpassed

Sheep Meadow

"A great city is nothing more than a portrait of itself, and yet when all is said and done, its arsenals of scenes and images are part of a deeply moving plan. As a book in which to read this plan, New York is unsurpassed. For the whole world has poured its heart into the city by the Palisades, and made it far better than it ever had any right to be."
Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

Saturday, March 23, 2013

One Against Many

Freeman Alley

"What affected everybody in New York all the time was a dynamic interaction between the solitary individual and the overwhelming size of the city. This was an off-kilter dynamic, an experience of the one against the many."
Jed Perl, New Art City

Friday, March 22, 2013

City of Survivors

Silverstein Family Park

"New York has always struck me as a city of survivors, of people who have succeeded largely because they have somehow managed not to be knocked by the wayside."
Stephen Birmingham, Cincinnati Magazine

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Bent

Third Avenue

"Everything in New York is bent. I don't know who does it. But, somebody gets up in the morning and goes out and twists every piece of metal until he's bent it. But nobody in New York seems aware that everything is bent."
Gore Vidal, Conversations with Gore Vidal

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

New York Spring

Bryant Park

"Whenever Spring comes to New York I can't stand the suggestions of the land that come blowing over the river from New Jersey and I've got to go. So I went."
Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

New York Life

George M. Cohan statue

"If I had to live in New York City I am sure my life would be wider—but not so long."
George M. Cohan, quoted in Here's to the Friars

Monday, March 18, 2013

Misfits

Astor Place

"A real New Yorker is someone who came from somewhere else where they felt like an outsider and then chose to move to New York to be around other misfits."
Susan Seifelman, New York Magazine

Saturday, March 16, 2013

Foreign Land

East River

"New York is a foreign land—the waterfront, unions, priests, the tugboat's moan—exotic as Siam or Casablanca."
B.H. Fairchild, "On the Waterfront," The Best American Poetry 2010

Friday, March 15, 2013

Directions

Chinatown Information Kiosk

"New Yorkers are nice about giving you street directions; in fact they seem quite proud of knowing where they are themselves."
Katherine Brush, quoted in The City

Thursday, March 14, 2013

The Most of Everything

Midtown West

"New York is simply a distillation of the entire United States, the most of everything, the conclusive proof that there is an American civilization."
Raymond Loewy, The Epic of New York City

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Where the Lights Meet the Road

West 18th

"New York is the greatest place where the lights meet the road."
N.G. Miller, quoted in 1001 Greatest Things Ever Said About New York

Monday, March 11, 2013

Ambivalence

South End Avenue

"I live in harmony with the ambivalence of New York: it's a huge metropolis, and people project onto it their fantasies of success and try to look away from the threats of its underside."
Ernestine Bradley, The Way Home

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Looking for Something

Riverside Park

"Everybody in New York is looking for something. Every once in a while, somebody finds it."
Donald E. Westlake, Dancing Aztecs

Saturday, March 9, 2013

My New York

Alfred E. Smith Houses and Manhattan Bridge

"The New York City you live in is not my New York City; how could it be? This place multiplies when you're not looking."
Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York

Friday, March 8, 2013

Two Faults

Chelsea

"Speaking of New York as a traveler, I have two faults to find with it. In the first place, there is nothing to see; and, in the second place, there is no mode of getting about to see anything."
Anthony Trollope, North America

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Venetian Glass

Riverside Boulevard

"I'm in love with New York. When you bring your own riches to it,  it is like drinking from a Venetian glass. It is beautiful, and vital, and magical."
Anaïs Nïn, A Literate Passion

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

A Struggle

Vera Wang store

"New York is a struggle to survive, to be noticed, to be wanted, to be married."
Gail Parent, Sheila Levine is Dead and Living in New York

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

The Greatest City

General Theological Seminary and Empire State Building

"I am not afraid to admit that New York is the greatest city on the face of God's earth."
Brendan Behan, Brendan Behan's New York

Monday, March 4, 2013

Our Paris

The High Line

"New York is a special case, our Paris; you go to have your corners knocked off."
Larry McMurtry Texas Monthly

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Point of Disembarkation

World Financial Center Ferry Terminal

"New York has always been the great point of disembarkation in the history and mythology of the New World."
Richard Reynolds, Super Heroes

Saturday, March 2, 2013

For a Short Time

Tick Tock Diner

"This ain't my town. It's a town you come to for a short time. It's murder."
Ernest Hemingway, Portrait of Hemingway

Friday, March 1, 2013

Neighbor Etiquette

Apartment building on the Lower East Side

"This is New York City. You don't get close to the neighbors. You nod at them politely in the hall. You call the cops if you haven't seem them in a while and you smell something funny, and that's it."
Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor), How I Met Your Mother