Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Geometry and Anguish


Mural on Lafayette Street

"The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extrahuman architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish. At first glance, the rhythm may be confused with gaiety, but when you look more closely at the mechanism of social life and the painful  slavery of both men and machines, you see that it is nothing but a kind of typical, empty anguish that makes even crime and gangs forgivable means of escape."
Federico GarcĂ­a Lorca, The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

Monday, March 30, 2015

Stroll

Battery Park


"Strolling through New York makes me feel good. I feel like I'm leaving part of me behind and like I'm walking toward my destiny, toward a new self. I don't know whether it's because I've seen that city in a million movies, or because it's part of my imagination, but all these streets, these smells, all these different things please me and put me in a good mood."
Fabio Volo, One More Day

Sunday, March 29, 2015

Saturday, March 28, 2015

Harsh Mistress



"New York is a harsh mistress."
Tom Maremaa, Imagined

Friday, March 27, 2015

Generosity of Spirit

Statue of Liberty


"Generosity of spirit is a NYC trait. Ask the lady in the harbor."
William F.B. O'Reilly, Newsday

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Smallness

Dumbo

"New Yorkers love the bigness -- the skyscrapers, the freedom, the lights. But they also love it when they can carve out some smallness for themselves. When the guy at the corner store knows which newspaper you want. When the barista has your order ready before you open your mouth. When you start to recognize the people in your orbit, and you know that, say, if you're waiting for the subway at eight fifteen on the dot, odds are the redhead with the red umbrella is going to be there too."
Andrea Cremer and David Levithan, Invisibility

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Neither a Jungle Nor the Moon

Midtown Manhattan


"This city is neither a jungle nor the moon not the Grand Hotel. In long shot: a cosmic smudge, a conglomerate of bleeding energies. Close up, it is a fairly legible printed circuit, a transistorized labyrinth of beastly tracks, a data bank for asthmatic voice-prints."
Susan Sontag, I, etcetera

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Village Under Glass


"She still couldn't believe sometimes she actually was a resident of this city. The place was rarified, striking, closed off, and encapsulated. A village under glass."
Helen Schulman, This Beautiful Life

Monday, March 23, 2015

New York Type of Gal



"I'm a New York type of gal. I may sound like an out-of-towner to New Yorkers, but my brain and mouth have always worked at roughly the same speed, so I fit right in."
Kristin Chenoweth, The Wall Street Journal


Sunday, March 22, 2015

Full of Possibility


"New York is full of possibility. It always feels as if anything could happen."
Diane von Furstenberg, Women Wear's Daily

Saturday, March 21, 2015

Palaces Without Noblemen

Morningside Heights

"People here are funny. They work so hard at living they forget how to live. Last night, after I left you, I was walking along and - and lookin' at the tall buildings, and I got to thinking about what Thoreau said. 'They created a lot of grand palaces here, but they forgot to create the noblemen to put in them.'"
Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town

Friday, March 20, 2015

Lyrical Intensity

Central Park

"In New York there are certain wonderful seasons in which this feeling grows to a lyrical intensity. One of these are those first tender days of Spring when lovely girls and women seem suddenly to burst out of the pavements like flowers."
Thomas Wolfe, The Web and The Rock

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Soaring Height

Top of the Rock

"Half the reason people come to New York is to experience the soaring height of Manhattan inside themselves, in their personal ambitions, their chances in life. There is no point in moving here unless you seek an enlargement of some inner sense of self."
Jay Rosen, 9/11 8:48 am

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Feeling Like Tourists

Times Square

"Maybe even native New Yorkers felt like tourists in the Square, dwarfed, wanting to look up and read the electronic headlines as they marched around and around up there."
Stephen King, The Stand

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

One in Millions

Penn Station


"Always before I had felt like a person, an individual, hopeful that I could mold my life according to some desire of my own. But here in New York I was ignorant, insignificant, unimportant—one in millions whose destiny concerned no one. New York did not even know of my existence. Nor did it care."
Agnes Smedley, Daughter of Earth

Monday, March 16, 2015

Looking Forward

Williamsburg Bridge

"It is a city in perpetual transformation, but the energy is always the same: of looking forward, of improving, of changing, of new fun things to do. That’s what New York is about, unlike Paris or London or Rome, which is all about the past. New York is all about the future."
Dimitri Karađorđević, The Epoch Times

Sunday, March 15, 2015

Of Cockroaches and New Yorkers



"You're not a real New Yorker until you've killed a cockroach with your bare hands."
Marshall Eriksen (Jason Segel), How I Met Your Mother

Saturday, March 14, 2015

Kind New Yorkers



"My favorite thing about New York is the people, because I think they're misunderstood. I don't think people realize how kind New York people are."
Bill Murray, quoted in On the Brinks

Friday, March 13, 2015

Torn Down


"As usual in New York, everything is torn down before you have time to care for it."
James Merrill, Essays in Criticism

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Wild, Wacky, Wonderful

Trump Tower

"I love New York. I love every cliche about this wild, wacky, wonderful city. And they're all true. Sure, it's loud. And brash. And bright. And gritty. Sure, everyone here thinks he lives at the center of the universe. So what? We do."
Sean Hannity, Let Freedom Ring

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

New York is Crazy



"New York is crazy. If you live only in New York, you have no idea of the planet."
Steve Lacy, Steve Lacy: Conversations


Tuesday, March 10, 2015

All New York is a Stage

Lee Strasberg Way


"In Manhattan, every flat surface is a potential stage and every inattentive waiter an unemployed, possibly unemployable, actor."
Quentin Crisp, Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations

Monday, March 9, 2015

Mechanical Intelligence



"New York is more now than the sum of its people and buildings. It makes sense only as a mechanical intelligence, a transporter system for the daily absorbing and nightly redeploying of the human multitudes whose services it requires."
Peter Conrad, The Art of the City

Sunday, March 8, 2015

What New Yorkers Forget

Third Avenue


"I came to New York for the reason everyone comes to New York, because it is the city of changes. People forget this is what they love about New York. They get old, they get grumpy. They get... nostalgic."
Florent Morellet, New York Magazine

Saturday, March 7, 2015

Dichotomy

Building on East 42nd


"There is a constant dichotomy of prosperity and poverty, hope and despair, sophistication and vulgarity, culture and coarseness, all of which asserts that in New York City there is never a dull moment."
Evan Piekara, The Lion's Den

Friday, March 6, 2015

Noise

Third Avenue

"New York is great. I've got so much noise. Subways. Horns. I can't stand nothing quiet. I go nuts."
Miles Davis, Miles on Miles

Thursday, March 5, 2015

On the Go

Sixth Avenue


"That is what New Yorkers are like, always on the go, always trying to get ahead of one another. And they do it all with a kind of dignity.They dress well, live high if sometimes wildly, and do not flinch from the most foolhardy speculations."
Knut Hamsun, Knut Hamsun Remembers America

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Police Sketch

24th Precinct

"New York is great though. If you're here and want a one of a kind souvenir be sure to take home the police sketch of your assailant."
David Letterman, The Little Red Book of New York Wisdom

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Williamsburg

Kent Avenue

"Oh, Williamsburg. There was a point when you seemed like a scary, tough neighborhood, but now it's obvious that the graffiti on your walls gets put there by art students."
Imogen Binnie, Nevada

Monday, March 2, 2015

Beginning of March


"New York, at the beginning of March, is a hoyden we would not care to miss—a drafty wench, her temperature up and down, full of bold promises and dust in the eye."
E.B. White, Writings from the New Yorker


Sunday, March 1, 2015

Bitch


"New York is my bitch. A cruel, lovely bitch I can't enjoy or leave alone."
Horace R. Cayton, Long Old Road