Job, Apartment and Lover

Sara Delano Roosevelt Park

"Everybody in New York City is looking for a job, an apartment, and a lover. If they already have one of them they are looking for a better one."
Anthony Marcus, Where Have All the Homeless Gone?

Manhattans

First Avenue

"There are as many Manhattans as there are residents on the island. Each of us a city unto ourselves."
Danny Messer (Carmine Giovinazzo), CSI: NY

City of the Present

Madison Avenue

"One may despair in New York, but it is difficult to brood on the past; for New York is the City of the Present, the City of Things that are Going On."
P.G. Wodehouse, The Prince and Betty

Testimony of Virtue

"New Yorkers view the city's shortcomings as testimony to their own virtue, a virtue built upon the idea that the proof of any individual's humanity is how well he can endure the irritation of living in this city."
Leonard Kriegel, Voices from the Edge

The Soul of New York

Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges

"New York has changed. Manhattan is like Beverly Hills. And the soul of New York has moved to Brooklyn, where everything new and exciting seems to be."
Alec Baldwin, New York Magazine

New York Paranoia

"New York, thy name is paranoia."
Stephen King, The Stand

Alternate Side of the Street

"In yet another effort to clean up New York City the mayor urged the City Council to pass legislation that would require alternate side of the street urinating."
Dennis Miller, quoted in The Friars Club Encyclopedia of Jokes

Native New Yorker

"I'm from New York -- genetically engineered to dislike everywhere except Manhattan."
Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey), Grey's Anatomy

Not Just a Place

"New York isn't just a place, it's a society, an attitude, a bunch of ideas about life."
Glenn O'Brien, I Speak Music

Run Down

Allen St.

"New York is the only city in the world where you can get deliberately run down on the sidewalk by a pedestrian."
Russell Baker, The Mammoth Book of Comic Quotes

Glimmer and Glitter

"I don't really know what draws me to New York — it just glimmers and glitters like no place else."
Christiana Spens, The Wrecking Ball

Literature and Weather

Central Library

"New York is the irony of reading the finest literature in the world and speaking only of the weather."
Cindy Chupack, The Between Boyfriends Book

Ruby in the Rough

Red Cube, by Isamu Noguchi

"New York is a ball of flesh a little pointed toward the top, a ball of millennial and crystallized entrails; a monumental ruby in the rough— with the organ-point of its flashes directed toward heaven, somewhat like the form of an inverted heart - before being polished!"
Salvador Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí

Loneliest City

East 25th St.

"New York is the loneliest city. It doesn't smoke anymore, it doesn't drink much anymore, it doesn't do drugs, it's too rich and too expensive. The people who made the fun for the people who made the money have moved out. It's safe. But the city that doesn't sleep can now barely stay awake for dessert—if it ever ate dessert."
A.A. Gill, Previous Convictions

Hearts of New York

Central Park

"New York is not all bricks and steel. There are hearts there too, and if they do not break, then they at least know how to leap."
H.L. Mencken, Second Mencken Chrestomathy

Monstruous

"I saw the city, and it horrified me. There was something monstrous about it—the tall buildings looming to the sky and the lights shining through the falling snow."
John Steinbeck, America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction

Room for Money

New York Stock Exchange

"New York people have room for our money but they make us feel crowded and not particularly longed for. Even people who belong in New York do not long for each other here."
Gerald Stanley Lee, The House of Twenty-Seven Gardens

Transfusion

New York Blood Center bus on 42nd St.

"New York is the perfect town for getting over a disappointment, a loss, or a broken heart. Some people find it cruel and lonely. To me it was a transfusion, mostly because it was real."
Shirley MacLaine, You Can Get There From Here

Beauty and Wealth

Gramercy Park

"This is New York, the city of the most beautiful people in the world. The city where riches are beyond compare."
Kathleen O'Reilly, The Diva's Guide to Selling Your Soul

Survivors

Long Island City

"New Yorkers, being New Yorkers, love survivors."
Dolly Carlisle, Ragged but Right

Ruled by Foreigners

City Hall

"New York is the most un-American city in the country. At least it is the only one which permits itself to be exclusively ruled by foreigners, and those of the lowest and most ignorant sort."
Henry Sedley, Dangerfield's Rest

Olympic Sport

The Mall

"My favorite sport in the Olympics is the one in which you make your way through the snow, you stop, you shoot a gun, and then you continue on. In most of the world, it is known as the biathlon, except in New York City, where it is known as winter."
Michael Ventre, quoted in You Don't Say

Know-It-Alls

"New Yorkers may look like they're in a rush, but most are such incurable know-it-alls, they're always happy to tell you where to go."
Holly Hughes, Frommer's New York City with Kids

Dinner Party

"New York is like a big dinner party. You have to be very careful about what you say and do because you never know whose feet are touching under the table."
Susanna Moore, In the Cut

New York Culture

"Two million people buzzing around on just twenty-three square miles of land bred a certain culture: efficiency in moving from point A to point B; no eye contact or small talk; no connection to the people one passed on the way. And along with that culture came a distinct feeling of anonymity."
Alafair Burke, Never Tell

Horatio Alger

"New York is the place where Horatio Alger stories come with afterwords, or dark twists at their conclusions; surrounded by unconquerable verticals two hundred times taller than oneself, one's body and one's dreams are brought quickly down to size."
Pico Iyer, Tropical Classical

Winner

Super Bowl Boulevard

"New York is a passionate city. They want a winner. They deserve a winner."
Patrick Ewing, quoted in the New York Daily News

Dominatrix

"New York was a dominatrix on the prowl, cracking a mean whip and tantalizing with every vice."
Sylvia Day, Entwined with You