Saturday, January 31, 2015

Intimate

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-cleaners-neon-sign-says-organic-dry-cleaning-image45037501#res4467664
Upper West Side

"New York is one of the most intimate places in the country. You know your dry cleaner. You know the guy who runs the coffee shop. I mean, I have the same bus driver twice a week. You're not going to get that in a lot of other cities where you're driving all the time. It's a very cozy place to live and I think a lot of people who haven't lived in a walking city sometimes don't understand that. I would really miss that. It's a giant city with these really small moments that make it worth it."
Pam Nelson, My City, My New York

Friday, January 30, 2015

Doesn't Belong to the Rest of America

New York Passport Agency

"New York City, which has a way of making you feel like you're in the Third World just seconds after you thought you'd conquered all of Western civilization, has never really belonged to the rest of the country."
Meghan Daum, My Misspent Youth

Thursday, January 29, 2015

Teeming with Life

Central Park West and The Lake

"Beautiful, wonderful, dizzying New York, teeming with life, each tiny lit window a tale: of someone, of something, of heartbreak and triumph and joy and agony and stupidity and sorrow and sex and laughter and betrayal and loneliness."
Michael Callahan, Searching for Grace Kelly

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

The New York Version

Movie trailer in Morningside Heights

"That's what can happen in New York – it's a place where you get to appear in a more interesting version of your own life."
Boff Whalley, Run Wild

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Snow in New York

Third Avenue

"Snow in New York is like poetry, or clothes made of roses.
Who needs it, what can you build with snow, who can you feed?"
May Swenson, To Mix with Time

Monday, January 26, 2015

Blizzard

Sara Delano Roosevelt Park

"A blizzard in New York is like a blizzard nowhere else; the snow falls in strange vectors of force, leaning around buildings to get at the street as if around the trunks of banyan trees. Snow does not come to the city without a struggle, for its very presence represents an immediate challenge to Man the Toolmaker, Man the Designer, Man the Builder, who has thrown up his structures of form and function like so many towers of Babel, not to reach the heavens, but to deny them access to the ground."
Myles Eric Ludwig, Golem, a Hero for Our Time

Sunday, January 25, 2015

Body Cavity

Grand Central subway station

"New York, home of subway and pothole, is the pumping inner body cavity of America, the country's living heterotopian space."
Marlene Barr, Genre Fission

Saturday, January 24, 2015

Gift

Tory Burch store

"New York is about surprises and newness and evolution, and that's one thing that I love. Anyone that comes to New York feels that New York is a unique and special city. Living here is such a gift."
Tory Burch, T Magazine

Friday, January 23, 2015

Homesickness

Manhattan skyline

"I miss New York, in a strange way, with a homesickness I've never felt before for any place on earth. I'm in love with New York, and I don't mean I love it, but I mean I'm in love with it."
Ayn Rand, Letters of Ayn Rand

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Parking Space

Sign in the Village

"If no real New Yorkers have cars, why is it so hard to find a parking space?"
Dana Hopkins (Analeigh Tipton), Manhattan Love Story

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Messy

Matthew Broderick at Madame Tussauds

"I like what a mess it is. Unlike Paris, which is beautiful, New York is sort of a messy, ugly, and beautiful place."
Matthew Broderick, My City, My New York

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Who Can Afford Living in New York

The Salvation Army

"The only people who can afford to live in New York are the rich and the poor."
David McGlynn, quoted in 1001 Greatest Things Ever Said About New York

Monday, January 19, 2015

Blind Crowd

West 23rd

"You could live in New York, I had begun to realize, without ever having to open your mouth except for life's necessities. You could even be invisible, not because you were hidden by the crowd but because the crowd was blind to your being a part of it."
Mary Cantwell, Manhattan, When I was Young

Sunday, January 18, 2015

The Solace of Walls

Number 6 subway train

"New York has taught me the solace of walls. I feel more comfortable in a subway than a field, more willing to concentrate on something with momentum than on a landscape that will not flicker or revolve."
Michael Goldstein, quoted in People in Cities

Saturday, January 17, 2015

City of Winners

Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge

"New York is a miracle. This is the greatest city in the world, a city of winners, and we are not stepping aside for anybody."
Ed Koch, Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York City

Friday, January 16, 2015

Throb and Burst

East 53rd


"New York is pulsating and real nervous-like. It's jumpy and feverish. It's all throb and burst."
Ed Ifkovic, Lone Star

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Calm and Peaceful

Peace Fountain

"When you return to New York from anywhere, and you have that sense of relief — that you’ve arrived to a calm and peaceful place — then you’ve become a New Yorker."
Suroosh Alvi, New York Magazine

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Can't Stop

La Guardia Airport

"New York just can't stop. It's like flying — the city is sustained by the thrust of its forward momentum and by its speed. When the law of gravity changes, New York will stop progressing."
Fiorello La Guardia, Empire City

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Town and Country

Gantry Plaza State Park

"New York is like a country, the neighborhood is your town, you spot someone from the block or the building in another neighborhood and the first impulse to the brain is, What are you doing here?"
Vivian Gornick, Approaching Eye Level

Monday, January 12, 2015

Separate Species


"Real New Yorkers didn't risk stiff necks to stare up at the city skyline. No, real New Yorkers were a separate species, for whom not looking up was as much a point of honor as not riding the elevator up to the observation deck of the Empire State Building."
Leonard Kriegel, Voices from the Edge

Sunday, January 11, 2015

Hair Raising

JFK Airport

"It's sort of how New York makes me feel now every time I land at JFK. On the Long Island Expressway back into the city you come over that little hill and see the skyline of New York. It makes your hair stand up on the back of neck."
Ben Watts, Lickshot

Saturday, January 10, 2015

Murders

Department of Correction bus

"There are several million inhabitants of New York. Not all of them eke out a precarious livelihood by murdering one another, but there is a definite section of the population which murders - not casually, on the spur of the moment, but on definitely commercial lines at so many dollars per murder."
P.G. Wodehouse, Psmith, Journalist

Friday, January 9, 2015

Transplants

Moving boxes on Madison Avenue

"Everyone living in New York is a transplant. Even the ones who grew up on the Upper East Side end up moving into a place downtown, which, as you'll soon discover, is like moving to a different city."
Ryan O'Connell, How to Live in New York City

Thursday, January 8, 2015

Statue of Liberty

Statue of Liberty


"New York is like the symbol, the Statue of Liberty. It's a city that takes into its bosom any mutant."
Patti Smith, Patti Smith: An Unauthorized Biography

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Cold

Columbus Circle

"New York is cold, for it has too much iron and steel
Since it is overloaded, the heart of New York is numb
The sun and sky are covered by the flags of material desire."
Rong Zi, quoted in Modernist Aesthetics in Taiwanese Poetry Since The 1950s

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Winter Wonderland

Bethesda Terrace

"New York is at its show-off Winter Wonderland best: It's cold, but not frigid, and the air is filled with big, plump snowflakes that land and rest for a second before melting on your nose or in your hand. On those days, the city is like a movie set or the inside of a snow globe, and when you walk down the street, grown-ups and kids alike are grinning as if Christmas has come all over again."
Robin Roberts, Everybody's Got Something

Monday, January 5, 2015

A Million Stories

Wall Street / Pier 11 landing

"New York. The city of a million stories. Half of them are true. The other half just haven't happened yet."
Sam Garner (Rob David), Doctor Who

Sunday, January 4, 2015

Episodes of Glory

Saint Patrick's Cathedral


"The streets of New York and some wards of its venerable institutions were packed with people who, despite being entirely forsaken, had episodes of glory that made the career of Alexander the Great seem like a day in the life of a file clerk."
Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

Saturday, January 3, 2015

Enormity



"New York, where sheer enormity has consumed so much humanity."
William Marline, quoted in People in Cities

Friday, January 2, 2015

Dream City


"New York is my dream city. Growing up in middle of nowhere New Jersey, I always knew that my true home was across the water. The energy here makes me feel alive. Anything is possible in New York. This is where dreamers come to manifest their heart’s desires."
Susane Colasanti, quoted in Jean Book Nerd


Thursday, January 1, 2015

New Year

(Credit: 1dragon22 / Wikimedia Commons)

"New York without New Year's would be like Rome without Christmas."
Matthew Hale Smith, Sunshine and Shadow in New York