Looking at Yourself

Plaza 33

"I think part of picking where you live in New York is accepting who you are. Really looking at yourself and going, 'Yeah, I’m not cool enough for the West Village.'"
Tina Fey, Vogue Magazine

True Capital

Manhattan Bridge

"I'll tell you this. New York is the true capital of America. Every New Yorker knows it, and by God, we always shall."

Edward Rutherfurd, New York

Tomb

St. Paul's Churchyard

"New York is a huge tomb, full of writhing, hungry death."
Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway

Living Room

Hudson River Park

"These are our streets, the ones we walk and bike every day. The subway in its tunnel is our car in the garage. Rockaway is our oceanfront. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is our living room. New York is our living room."
William Powers, New Slow City

Alpha

IBM Building

"Manhattan is for the hard-bodied, the hard-minded, the multitasker, the alpha mamas and papas. A perfect place for self-empowerment—as long as you're pretty empowered to begin with."
Zadie Smith, The New York Review of Books

Iron in the Soul

"We are New Yorkers. We've got iron in the soul. We're cold, we're tough, we're double-parked."
Pete Hamill, New York Magazine

Not Conceited

Temperance Fountain in Tompkins Square Park

"I know that New-Yorkers are sometimes said to be 'conceited' and so they are, but not of their individual selves, but of their city. No man can live in New York for years and have much individual conceit. New-York life 'knocks it all out' of him. No matter how smart and rich he may be, he meets every day people who are smarter and richer."
Thomas N. Doutney, Thomas N. Doutney: His Life-struggle, Fall and Reformation

World Capital

Norman Mailer star at the Playwright Star Sidewalk

"Chicago is the great American city. New York is one of the capitals of the world and Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic."
Norman Mailer, Miami and the Siege of Chicago

City of Solitude

Dumbo

"New York is my spiritual fatherland; here in the city of solitude, we—the refugees of the spirit—we get together to become vagabonds of our mutual utopias. And because here we are so many of our species, each finds his  own kind. You see, in this city of solitude nobody feels the only solitary one, and thus nobody is really alone."
Jerzy Kosinski, Passing By

Memories

NYC ferry

"Living in New York turns out to be a process of earning nostalgia — hoarding enough memories to give you the kind of claim on a place that makes it possible to leave it. When you reach your limit and set out elsewhere, memories are your consolation prize."
Eryn Loeb, The Millions

Why Do People Love New York?

East Houston

"Why do people love New York? The streets are dirty, the people are crass, the rents are exorbitant, the crime rate is high, the winters are miserable and the summers are damn hot. Yet New York is by far America's most vibrant and exciting city—an organic, ever-changing monster with a mind of its own."
James Bernard Frost, New York & New Jersey: A Guide to the Organic Food Stores, Farmers' Markets & Vegetarian Restaurants

Mosaic

Mosaic on West 42nd St.

"New York is a mosaic, consisting of so many colors, and we are some of those colors."
Aron Aronov, quoted in Greeted with Smiles

Expose Yourself

Williamsburg

"The beautiful thing about New York is, you have to expose yourself to other people the minute you step outside the door. There is no choice."
Sarah Jessica Parker, Vogue

New York at Its Worst

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir

"New York in February is New York at its worst, unless you count those hundred-degree August weekends when everyone's off at the Hamptons but you. The cheery buzz of the holidays is long gone, and the spring thaw is too distant to provide any solace. Add a three-inch layer of blackened slush, and it can feel like Moscow without the twelve-cent vodka."
Rob Reid, Year Zero

Philadelphia

Borough Hall subway station

"She took the subway out to Brooklyn. The borough seemed to her a Philadelphia rescued by adjacency to Manhattan."
Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections

Welcome to New York

Taylor Swift at Madame Tussauds

"Walking through a crowd
The village is aglow
Kaleidoscope of loud heartbeats
Under coats
Everybody here wanted something more
Searching for a sound we hadn't heard before
And it said
Welcome to New York
It's been waiting for you."
Taylor Swift, Welcome to New York

World Without End

"If Broadway was a river running from the top of Manhattan down to the Battery, undulating with traffic and commerce and lights, then the east-west streets were eddies where, leaf-like, one could turn slow circles from the beginning to the ever shall be, world without end."
Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

Abusive Boyfriend

Manhattan (Pixabay)

"Like an abusive boyfriend, it's addictive. No matter how frequently it fucks me over or how hard it can be to live with, I love it so hard that I keep coming back. Even if New York punched me in the face and slept with my sister  I'd still pledge my undying loyalty."
Jenny Donoghue, Crazy Town

Only City

Armani store on Fifth Avenue

"New York is the only city in the world. It defines the idea of what a city is."
Giorgio Armani, Giorgio Armani: Empire of the Senses

Every Walk of Life

Flushing Meadows-Corona Park

"New York at its best exposes one to every walk of life. That's unbeatable education."
Sean MacPherson, New York Family

A Place to Aspire to

Manhattan skyline

"Even when we are established here, New York somehow still seems a place we aspire to. Its life is one thing—streets and hot dogs and brusqueness—and its symbols, the lights across the way, the beckoning skyline, are another. We go on being inspired even when we're most exasperated."
Adam Gopnik, Through the Children's Gate

More Than You Can Chew

East 27th

"You know how New York is; it always turns out to be much more than you pictured; a hell of a lot more than you can chew. It doesn't play any favorites and you can never take it by storm."
Gregory Davis, Dark Magus

Freedom to Be Different

Bryant Park

"Other places demand that 'when in Rome, do as the Romans do.' New York allows you to form your own little niche even if you are the only individual to wear that distinctive cloak! That is a freedom that few other places in the country, not to  mention the world, will allow you to possess. The freedom to be different."
Randolph James, Love in the Classroom

Puzzle

Manhattan skyline and Dumbo

"New York is a puzzle to be solved, or be defeated by."
Jon Caramanica, Los Angeles Times

Too Busy to Sleep

Diner on the Upper West Side

"New Yorkers never sleep because they are too busy trying to afford to live here."
Elaine Szewczyk, I'm With Stupid

No Justification

125 Worth St.

"The greatest gift of New York is that it requires no justification to live there. It's New York."
Stephen Marche, The Hunger of the Wolf

Best and Worst of Times

Trump International Hotel & Tower

"New York has seen the best of times and the worst of times, and whatever happens it always comes out a little brighter and a few stories higher."
Donald Trump, The America We Deserve

Mixture of Mankind

United Nations Way

"Where else in all the world has a body-polis, as New York, shown that nations can shed their nationalistic and tribal fears and hatreds and live together in peace? What other place has taken whole nations into itself, black and white and brown and yellow, and given them a community of home and interest? What a wonderful, incredible mixture of mankind we are!"
Howard Fast, War and Peace