Halloween in New York

"Halloween in New York is special. The people wear astounding masks, wings, and long arms. They have eyes and teeth, which are bulging, and some of the people are wild and some are beautiful. They remind us on that night there is no place for civilization to hide, because these feelings were in us before civilization was born."
Bahadur Tejani, Obamawala

Hustle-Bustle

"New York is hustle-bustle; it's in your face at all times. 'Hurry up, move on.'"
Reggie Jackson, Becoming Mr. October

Cold-Hearted Bitch

"New York City, you're a woman
Cold-hearted bitch ought to be your name
Oh, you ain't never loved nobody
Yet I'm drawn to you like a moth to flame."
Al Kooper, New York City (You're a Woman)

Inside Theater

"New York: The city where the people from Oshkosh look at the people from Dubuque in the next theater seats and say, 'Humph, these New Yorkers don't dress any better than we do.'"
Robert Benchley, quoted in The Reporter

Three Cities

Tennessee Williams star at the Playwright Star Sidewalk

"America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland."
Tennessee Williams, quoted in New Orleans Style

Wannabes

"Why is it that everyone in New York is a wannabe? Are there any be's in New York at all? That's only a rhetorical question; I know the answer is no."
Kathleen O'Reilly, The Diva's Guide to Selling Your Soul

Personal Architecture

Bricks in Midtown

"New York doesn't judge you. Everybody is unique in New York, everybody is trying. It's a city of personal architecture, with everybody trying to build up their own legend, everybody re-creating themselves"
Patti Smith, Patti Smith: An Unauthorized Biography

Rat Maze

42nd Street subway station

"When I was in New York it was like a maze, a rat maze, going from one little box to another little box and passing through passageways to get from one safe haven to another."
Bruce Conner, Yeti 9

Struggle and Steel

34th Street subway station

"New York prefers and prefers and prefers — it prefers power and scope to tranquility and intimacy, it prefers struggle and steel to acquiescence and cushions."
Cynthia Ozick, Quarrel & Quandary

The Bottom

South Street Seaport

"If one thing is certain, it is that there is no getting to the bottom of New York."
Jed Perl, quoted in Concrete Reveries: Consciousness and the City

Electric City

"I dreamed about moving to New York, I obsessed over moving to New York and then I did it. And  the inspiration that I found in that city is kind of hard to describe and hard to compare to any other force of inspiration I've ever experienced in my life. It's like an electric city."
Taylor Swift, YouTube

Secluded Enclaves

Falun Dafa in Madison Square Park

"New York is filled with all sorts of secluded enclaves where people get together to celebrate what makes them feel alive. These kinds of things didn't exist back home. Here, excitement never fades. It's like a drug."
Susane Colasanti, So Much Closer

Nocturnal Animal

"New York is certainly the City That Never Sleeps. But the nocturnal animal that is New York late at night is a very different beast indeed. The air is clearer; the lights are crisper in their incandescent efforts to pierce the eternal nighttime darkness. Every shadow, every person, every corner, seems to have its own story."
Wallace Ford, What You Sow

Energy

ConEd substation

"On some days, you can feel the energy in the New York air. You are crossing a street or leaving a movie, buying the newspapers or waiting in a cab for the traffic to move; and then, as if charged by currents from unseen dynamos, the air trembles."
Pete Hamill, New York Magazine

Freaking Me Out

"New York, I Love You
But you're freaking me out
There's a ton of the twist
But we're fresh out of shout

Like a death in the hall
That you hear through your wall
New York, I Love You
But you're freaking me out."

LCD Soundsystem, New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down

Subway Maps

R train

"Ask yourself why the New York subway system, alone among the mass transit systems of the world, has maps inside rather than outside the trains. It's to force you to get on the wrong train in order to find out where you're going."
Calvin Trillin, With All Disrespect

Everybody Hustles

Literary Walk

"This is New York City. Everyone hustles. That's one of the things that makes this place so great."
Barbara Block, Rubbed Out

Rich and Poor

Duke Ellington at Madame Tussauds

"New York is a place where the rich walk, the poor drive Cadillacs, and beggars die of malnutrition with thousands of dollars hidden in their mattresses."
Duke Ellington, Music is My Mistress

Where America Meets the World

United States Mission to the United Nations

"New York is the place where America meets the world."
Aleksandra Pendarovska, The Dance World in New York

Invisible

Park Avenue

"The pulse of New York is irresistible. And I find a kind of solace in feeling invisible on the streets here. As if there are so many people going along at once that I’m impossible to see."
Christa Parravani, The Rumpus

So Decadent

Grand Central Station

"New York is a city of seven million so decadent that when I leave it I never dare look back lest I turn into salt and the conductor throw me over his left shoulder for good luck."
Frank Sullivan, 1,001 Insults, Put-Downs & Comebacks

Metropolitan

Metropolitan Museum of Art

"You Gothamites strain hard to attain a metropolitan character, but I think if you felt very metropolitan you would not be showing it on all occasions."
James Russell Lowell, Letters of James Russell Lowell

Up

Morningside Park

"New York is about the hyper-real, the stratospheric heights, the infinite opportunity. Our aspirations trace the topography -- it’s all up, up, up!"
Lily Burana, New York Magazine

A Circus

Cirque du Soleil

"New York is a circus without a travel day. It's a freak show and a fashion parade — with no admission charge."
John Deleva, Hours Like Diamonds

Magical Twilight

Manhattan (Pixabay)

"In early autumn, twilight in New York is magical; the sky glimmers and there's energy in the streets. You feel powerful, invincible, as if every gritty bit of the city is yours."
Lisa Napoli, Radio Shangri-La

Find Yourself

Dumbo

"If you want to 'find yourself,' there is no better place to look than New York City. If you exist, you'll be there."

Randolph James, Love in the Classroom

Self-Importance

Museum of the City of New York

"The most permanent feature of New York is undoubtedly its air of self-importance, the locally prized conviction that, when you're here, you're in the place to be."
Guy Trebay, New York: The Big Apple Quote Book

The Foreigners

Korea Way

"The biggest thing I don’t like about New York are the foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?"
John Rocker, quoted in The Ten Things You Can't Say in America

Celebrating Difference

"Americans need New York because New York is one of the few places in the country that allows difference to be celebrated, that allows people to reach their full potential."
Kenneth T. Jackson, PBS

Carnival

"New York looked like painted sets in a sideshow at a carnival where the bearded lady, sword- swallowers, snake charmers, and magicians make their appearances."
Charles Simic, Paris Review

Magnetic Rock

"He could see the island of Manhattan off to the left. The towers were jammed together so tightly, he could feel the mass and stupendous weight. Just think of the millions, from all over the globe who yearned to be on that island, in those towers, in those narrow streets! There it was, the Rome, the Paris, the London of the twentieth century, the city of ambition, the dense magnetic rock, he irresistible destination of all those who insist on being where things are happening — and he was among the victors!"
Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities