The Opposite of L.A.

Long Island City

“What I love about New York is that everyone is in their own world. It's the opposite of L.A. - there, everyone is looking outside of themselves to see who's next to them. What's great about New York is that you get to be anonymous.”
Jordana Brewster, NY Daily News

The Streets of New York

Grand St.

"The streets are the worst in the world—in or out of the war zone. Between 42nd street and the Woolworth Building, on Broadway, there isn't one block out of the sixty where the sidewalk is clear. Pavements are like rugs in New York. They have to be taken up every few days and sent to the cleaner."
William Henry McMasters, Originality, and Other Essays

Becoming America

Scaffolding on Madison Avenue

"New York is fast becoming, if she be not already, America."
Charles F. Briggs, quoted in God in the Street

Brooklyn Beyond

Brooklyn and Verrazano-Narrows Bridge

"What's unsettling is to put Manhattan at your back and face the borough. Up from the canyon floor, out of the deep well of streets, gazing out into the Brooklyn Beyond is like standing in a Kansas prairie contemplating distance."
Jonathan Lethem, The Fortress of Solitude

Claim to Greatnesss

Chrysler Building

"Of all our cities, only New York, Chicago, and San Francisco can even lay claim to greatness, and only San Francisco is a joy to visit."
Edmund Falyermayer, Redoing America

Magic

Crosby St.

"New York is magic. People who write or speak of it have a strong sense of the place, whether or not they have been. Usually, either Manhattan is exhilarating or terrifying, scintillating or soul-killing. Figuratively larger than a city or even an island, it possesses mythic qualities."
Heidi R. Moore, The Aesthetics of Place and the Comedy of Discomfort

Robinson Crusoe

Rustic shelter on The Lake

"Robinson Crusoe, the self-sufficient man, could not have lived in New York City."
Walter Lippmann, quoted in Social Science and Urban Crisis

Unforgiving

Bowery

"New York is a hard city. It will allow you anything and forgive you nothing."
John Lutz, The Ex

What a Place

Broadway

"What a place this New York is. Black people, brown people, white people, yellow people and people sort of in-between. I love it."
Martin Millar, The Good Fairies of New York

Never Enough

Goldman Sachs headquarters

"No matter how many hours you work in this town or how much money you make, it's never enough."
Wendy Healy (Brooke Shields), Lipstick Jungle

Ethnic Food

Halal food cart in Midtown

"One of the glories of New York is its ethnic food, and only McDonald's and Burger King equalize us all."
John Corry, quoted on Zany's New York City Apartment Guide, 2000

Howl

Cooper Square

"New York is not like other cities. London greets the stranger with a sleepy grunt. Paris giggles. New York howls."
P.G. Wodehouse, The Prince and Betty

Planned Spontaneity

Madison Square Park

"New Yorkers love spontaneity, love it to death. But they need advance warning. You want to give a New York friend a panic attack, turn up unannounced on a Wednesday and suggest going for a drink. It is easier to organize five guys to raise a flag on Iwo Jima than to get mates out for movie and dinner."
A.A. Gill, To America with Love

Unintentional Beauty

Centre St.

"The beauty of New York rests on a completely different base. It's unintentional. It arose independent of human design, like a stalagmitic cavern."
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Foreign Accents

Allen St.

"New York is a city of foreign accents in which no one ever asks someone where he is from except out of hostility or as a form of flirtation."
Edmund White, My Lives

Midsummer Frolicking

Lasker Pool

"New York in July is out of synch, not quite itself, hoping for ransom, kidnapped by midsummer frolicking."
Cynthia Ozick, Quarrel & Quandary

Asylum

Bellevue Hospital

"New York is the biggest open air asylum in the world."
Anthony Volpe, 1001 Greatest Things Ever Said About New York

Leviathan

Museum of Natural History

"New York can swallow people up like the Leviathan did Jonah without a burp."
Joseph Emil Blum, Bedtime Stories: A Novel of Cinematic Wanderlust

New York vs Chicago

Ambassador Theatre

"New York is always grown up... assured. Chicago is always adolescent...vigorous. New York verifies, establishes, knows. Chicago hunts, tries, hopes. New York is the boundary, the front door."
Laurence Booth, Chicago and New York: Architectural Interactions

Epic City

7 Hanover Square

"In terms of beauty New York is not a great city. In terms of activity it is an epic city."
Norman Jaffe, quoted in The City

Tonic

"Moonbird" by Joan Miró

"Ah, what vitamins! This city is a tonic! This city is a doctor!"
Joan Miró, The Shape of Color

Cockteasing

Times Square

"I must say it's amazing how quickly you can cheer up in New York. This is no town for killjoys or cockteasers or spoilsports of any kind.  Not much cockteasing goes on in New York. It's not a problem."
Martin Amis, Money

From Lonely to Friendly

Columbus Park

"New York was the only city I knew in the world where you could be desperately lonely at nine in the morning, crossing the street for a bagel at Gristede's, and find that seven hours later you were drinking Irish coffee at PJ Clarke's with all the friends you had inherited along the way."
Shirley MacLaine, You Can Get There from Here

Language of Math

Columbia University

"To borrow the language of mathematics, New York is Hong Kong plus Paris times two."
David Bell and Avner de-Shalit, The Spirit of Cities

Series of Small Towns

Bernard Baruch Way

"New York is a small town, and that's true, though more accurately it's a series of small towns; that is, we New Yorkers each have our own small town."
Con Lehane, Death at the Old Hotel

Bad Reputation

Hon. Thomas Tam Way

"I don't suppose any city in the world has as bad a reputation or a press as New York City. Calcutta, perhaps. But with New York, everywhere you go, people wonder when the city's going to collapse from financial instability or when it's going to slide gracefully into the Atlantic Ocean. They want to know when it's going to burn itself out of existence."
George Plimpton, Cities

The Whole World

The Unisphere

"Oh, Gio! You must see why I love New York. Because the whole world's in New York."
Oriana Fallaci, Penelope at War

Fireworks

Macy's Fireworks

"New York is a gilded city. Everything is modern and ready to burst there. It's like fireworks."
Dagmara Dominczyk, The Lullaby of Polish Girls

The Only Place

Hell's Kitchen

"New York is the only place. That's because it's hell. And hell is the only place for people."
Esteban Vicente,  Esteban Vicente

Lovely Assaults

"I miss New York. I still love how people talk to you on the street— just assault you and tell you what they think of your jacket."
Madonna, On Being Blonde: Wit and Wisdom from the World's Most Infamous Blondes

Monologue

Bryant Park

"New Yorkers don't like to pause. This is not a reflective city. Everyone is too busy. There is a New York 'I'm so busy' monologue. It lasts for ten minutes."
Lily Brett, New York