Know Everybody

"Everybody in New York has always known everybody."
Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

Naked Cities

Naked Cowgirls in Times Square

"There are eight million naked cities in this naked city."
Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York

Reason to Be Thankful

Photo: Patrick J. Cashin

"I wake up every morning and say to myself, 'Well, I'm still in New York. Thank you, God.'"
Ed Koch, Vanity Fair

People in New York

Little Italy

"People in New York are either New Yorkers, or they're Spanish, or Italian, or Irish, or whatever. Who the hell moves to Williamsburg and says, Hey, I'm an American?"
Warren Ellis, Crooked Little Vein

Zen Wisdom

Brooklyn Botanic Garden

"Any attempt to define New York today recalls the Zen wisdom that you can't step in the same stream twice. The city is so mutable, so constantly changing, that it's almost impossible to get a fix on it."
Cheryl Farr Leas, Frommer's New York City from $80 a Day 2000

Never Stops

Eighth Avenue

"The amazing thing about New York is that it never really stops—it's always going, one way or the other."
Eric Bogosian, Perforated Heart

Disdain

Broadway

"A New Yorker is someone that has general disdain toward landlords, mass-transit authorities, electric companies, sports-team managers, NYU and its students, and anything new. We also have some kind of back pain."
Ad-Rock, quoted in New York Magazine

Foreigners

East 41st St.

"New York also has its thousands of Real Folks, but New York is cursed with unnumbered foreigners."
Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt

Vibrant Pace

"When I think about arriving in New York City, I anticipate its vibrant and pulsating pace which creates passionate feelings inside me."
Elizabeth Taylor, New York Vertical

Manhattanization

The buildings that will replace 5 Pointz (Source: Inhabitat.com)

"All over the world, 'Manhattanization' signifies everything in a city that is thought not to be authentic: high-rise buildings that grow taller every year, dense crowds where no one knows your name, high prices for inferior living conditions, and intense competition to be in style."
Sharon Zukin, Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places

Mammon

5 Pointz

"Mammon, n. The god of the world's leading religion. His chief temple is in the holy city of New York."
Ambrose Bierce, Devil's Dictionary

Music and Internal Engines

"The city is like poetry: it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines."
E.B. White, Here is New York

Victorian Novel

"New York was like a massive Victorian novel which forced you to work your way through its broad canvas and complicated subplots."
Douglas Kennedy, The Pursuit of Happiness

Live-Wired

"New York was so live-wired there was time only to act on instinct and for survival."
Shirley MacLaine, Out on a Limb

New York is Talk

Penn Station

"Hollywood is hype, New York is talk, Chicago is work."
Michael Douglas, The 2,548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said

Style

"A real New Yorker probably doesn't come from New York at all – it's all in the way she thinks and lives. It's all about style – that wonderful, special New York style that makes a true New York girl."
Arnold Scaasi, Women I Have Dressed (and Undressed!)

Sense of Smell

Cigarette butt bin on Third Avenue

"People say the stupidest things sometimes, too. 'Hey, man, you quit smoking, you get your sense of smell back.' I live in New York City, I got news for you: I don't want my fucking sense of smell back. (sniffs) Is that urine? (sniffs) I think I smell a dead guy! Honey, look at that guy! Covered in urine – check this out! Someone just peed on this guy – that's fresh. Just think, if I'd been smoking I never would have found him! (sniffs) A urine-covered dead fella. What are the odds? Thank God I quit smoking. Now I can enjoy the wonders of New York."
Bill Hicks, Love All the People

Attracted and Repelled

"Down through the years people have been attracted to and repelled by New York. Too huge and powerful to be ignored, the city stirs extreme opinions."
Edward Robb Ellis, Epic of New York City

Stateless

"New York is primarily a city without a country."
Ernest Duvergier de Hauranne, A Frenchman in Lincoln's America

A Challenge for the Exhibitionist

Broadway

"New York is a challenge for the exhibitionist: it's easier to make a U-turn on 42nd Street than it is to turn heads there."
Jay McInerney, The Last of the Savages

Reputation

"New Yorkers, by reputation, are fast-talking, assertive, and easily annoyed; I fit right in."
Jane Pauley, Skywriting

Manhattanites

Mulberrry Street

"Manhattanites are like sharks: always got to keep moving."
Samantha Jones (Lindsey Gort), The Carrie Diaries

Hopeful

"Hope" by Robert Indiana

"London is satisfied, Paris is resigned, but New York is always hopeful. Always it believes that something particularly good is about to come off, and it must hurry to meet it."
Dorothy Parker, quoted in The New York Times

Everybody is Famous

"In New York everybody is famous, everybody figures on the first page."
Michel Seuphor, quoted in Modern Artists in America

Vive La Différence

Dumbo

"That is one of the things I love best about Brooklyn. Every one is not expected to be exactly like every one else."
Carson McCullers, The Brooklyn Reader

New Yorkers are Just Like Other People

"New Yorkers are really no different than people anywhere else — there are just more of them who don't speak to each other."
S.B. Howard, Strange but True

Blowjob

"I love New York, it's a
great, big, beautiful blowjob to the mind
and that's why everyone wants to come here (pun intended)."
Tsaurah Litzky, Baby on the Water

New York Marathon

2014 TCS New York City Marathon

"I pulled a hamstring during the New York City Marathon. An hour into the race, I jumped up off the couch."
David Letterman, 1001 Pearls of Runners' Wisdom.

Always "The" City

"If a New Yorker lives in Great Britain, when he says 'The City,' he's not referring to London."
Sally Mandel, Heart and Soul

The New York Thing

"That's the New York thing, isn't it. People who seem absolutely crazy going around telling you how crazy they used to be before they had therapy."
Judith Rossner, Any Minute I Can Split