New Year's Eve

Times Square subway station

"If you've never attended a major event in New York City, be prepared. To beat the New Year's Eve street closures and crowds, you'll need to get there early. Like November 8."
Gary McKechnie, USA 101

Luck

East 23rd

"To leave New York is to leave a huge fair where at any moment I might meet with some huge bit of luck . . . some nights I sleep like a top dreaming of luck."
John Butler Yeats, Yeats: An Illustrated Biography

I'll Always Love You

"Window to the Heart" in Times Square

"Love won't play any games with you
Anymore if you want 'em to
So we better shake this old thing out the door
I'll always be thinkin' of you
I'll always love you though New York
I'll always love you though New York, New York, New York."
Ryan Adams, New York, New York

Troy

Liberty Park

"In New York you must be either a New Yorker or an invader of a modern Troy, concealed in the wooden horse of your conceited provincialism."
O. Henry, The Duel

Comforting

Lexington Avenue

"The streets of New York are never quiet. Horns honk. People talk, shout, sing. There is always music. It's a comfort, this never abating circus."
Kate Moretti, The Vanishing Year

Haven

"There goes the other happy poet bedraggledly back to New York which struck him all of a sheepish never-sleeping heap at first, but which seems to him now, after the ulcerous rigours of a lecturer's spring, a haven cosy as toast, cool as an icebox, and safe as skyscrapers."
Dylan Thomas, Quite Early One Morning

New York Christmas Carol

New York Public Library

"A New York Christmas carol: Crackheads roasting by an open fire, sewer rats nipping at your toes."
Yamaneika Saunders, The New York Times

Diamanté

Midtown Manhattan (Pixabay)

"Fifth Avenue still shone like an enormous blue sugarplum revolving in a tuttifrutti rain of light. Here was the season in all its questionable glory—the hallmarked joy of giving, the good will diamanté."

Hortense Calisher,  Extreme Magic

New York in December

Radio City Music Hall

"New York in December is something to behold, and I worked just blocks from Radio City Music Hall—home of the famous Christmas Spectacular, with the glittering nativity that suggests that since there was no room at the inn, the Holy Family just parked it for the night in a suite at the Four Seasons."
Caprice Crane, Forget About It

New York Energy

Mulberry Street

"New York has an energy that takes root inside of you. Even a transplant like me gets to know the different boroughs, like they're living, breathing organisms. There's nowhere else like it. The city becomes a character in your life, a love you can't take out of you."
Renee Carlino, Before We Were Strangers

Tough People

Gantry Plaza State Park

"New York was where the tough people gathered to live on their rock."
Lona Lang, Blue Mist

Reaching for the Stars

Madison Square Park

"I think if you ever came out here you'd change your mind about this place. How can I tell you what it's like? A new world, but more than that, a world I never knew existed. How can I describe stepping up out of the subway onto Lexington Avenue in a throng of walkers, every one of them bright and daring and reaching for the shining stars?"
Ethan Canin, For Kings and Planets

Many Worlds

Unisphere

"New York is a world of many worlds."

Richard John Neuhaus, New York Glory

Ultimate City

East 42nd

"New York is the ultimate city to me. The diversity, the food, the culture, the constant change that is at its core—it is truly one of the most inspiring places on the planet. "

Michael Kors, V Magazine

Looking Busy

"They look like they're being chased or trying to catch somebody. People never walk slowly, even if they have no place to go. There's nothing more pathetic to a New Yorker than somebody who doesn't look busy."
Jackie Mason, quoted in The City

City of Opportunity

"I can say with impunity
That New York is a City of Opportunity.
It also has many fine theaters and hotels,
And a lot of taxis, buses, subways and els,
Best of all, if you don't show up at the office or at a tea nobody
will bother their head
They will just think you're dead."
Ogden Nash, I Want New York

Born in New York

P.S. 75

"It is always hard for a Southerner to realize that people are born and grow up in NYC. To us, it is a place that you go to, that you even may live in for a while, but which is totally unsuitable to grow up in."
Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being

Safe

East Village

"It is safe now in New York, one of the safest cities in the world. It's not just safe, it minds how it goes. You can wear pearls in Times Square. You can wear nothing in Times Square. You can go and meditate in Washington Square. You're not even allowed to smoke in Central Park, let alone jump joggers. Now New York worries about its health instead of its safety."
A.A. Gill, To America With Love

Dressing Up

David Shankbone / Wikipedia

"New York is one of those cities that feels worth dressing up for, if that makes any sense. I just feel like when I walk out onto the sidewalk in New York, I have to just try a little harder."
Taylor Swift, quoted in E Online

New York Mentality

"You can find anything in New York. The city never sleeps. Or so they say. I know people who wouldn't live anywhere else. Yet it requires a very peculiar mentality to do so, a mentality that demands limitations, to be constantly surrounded by millions of other people, never to have open horizons. To dream in New York, one must turn inward and shut doors to lock out the city."
Webb Chiles, A Single Wave

Home at Last

FDR Drive

"Despite the harshness of everyday life—the raw, cold, scraping sensation of never leaving the street, because my apartment felt as if it were in the street—I was at home in New York. This feeling of being 'home at last' corresponds to my idea about the city, an idea shaped by books, movies, and plays, an idea of infinite possibility."
Siri Hustvedt, Yonder

New York Influence

"I would not be doing what I'm doing today if I hadn't come t New York. I was given my direction from new york. I was fed in new york. I was beaten down by new york an I was picked up by new york. I was made t keep going on by new york."
Bob Dylan, quoted in Bob Dylan: New York

Million Things, Million People

Gramercy Theatre

"New York City is a place where there are always a million exciting things to do at any given moment, and a million other people who are doing them at the exact same moment as you are."
Adam Sternbergh, Never Can Say Goodbye

Invitation

"If the Man wants to shove us out
We gonna jump and shout
The Statue of Liberty said, 'Come!'
New York City...New York City...New York City
Que pasa, New York?
Que pasa, New York?"
John Lennon, New York City

Provisional City

East 23rd

"A considerable part of New York is nothing more than a provisional city. A city which will be replaced by another city."
Le Corbusier, When the Cathedrals Were White

Parallel Worlds

Bernard Baruch Way

"In New York there was no courtesy, only parallel worlds. We worked hard at ignoring each other."
Victor LaValle, The Ecstatic

Progressive

Park Avenue during Summer Days

"I live in New York. I love this city, it's a great city. We're a progressive city: we've eliminated both cars and English."
Mike Lawrence, Comedy Central

Time is Money

Fifth Avenue (Pixabay)

"New York is impatient of its past; jealous of its present, and totally unconcerned as to its future. Time is money; money is life, life is all around you—and first come, first served."
Rian James, All About New York

Mental Illness

Grand Central Terminal (Pixabay)

"New York is mental illness, drug addiction and eating disorders served on a silver platter. A lot of us are cognitively challenged. There are so many different worlds here and we all overlap and bump up against each other. I call Grand Central a human particle accelerator.”
Marc Preven, Observer

Worth the Effort

Broadway

"I will never live anywhere else. And I always make sure I tell people that whenever they ask, ''So what do you think of New York?'' -- a question I get at least five times a week. I always say I will stay here forever, because I know what that question really means: ''I'm going broke and I'm feeling alienated and I'm trying to make it and I'm failing horribly, but I desperately need you to tell me that living here is still worth the effort.'

And I always tell them it is, because it's probably true."
Chuck Klosterman, The New York Times

True Anonymity

Ninth Avenue

"It's not a small town, unless you want it to be. If you want to see the same people all the time, you can, and it's like a village with one Main Street. Or you can have many sets of friends and job-in and be mysterious. Or, if you get jilted or commit a felony, you can simply move to a new neighborhood and make all new friends and start life all over again. It's the one city in the world that offers true anonymity."
Emily Praeger, New York Magazine

Staten Island

St. George Terminal

"If you don't know what Staten Island is, it's like New York's abortion that lived."
Pete Davidson, Gothamist

Functional City

Fifth Avenue

"Another reason I love living in New York is the fact that it's a functional city. Obviously not in the psychological sense — I mean as a collection of people we're as psychotic-ally challenged as anyone else — but in a practical sense, New York functions like nowhere else on earth. Everybody does something, provides some service, everyone, everything, has a purpose."

Bella Pollen, Hunting Unicorns

Coexistence

"In its own chaotic way, New York is a triumph of coexistence interrupted by people yelling at each other."
Rebecca Solnit, Nonstop Metropolis

The Best

"New York doesn't owe you a thing. She just stands there with one hand on her hip, jutting out provocatively, saying 'Well, whaddaya want?' in that cool, nasal drawl. She wants you to make the best of what she has to offer, and in turn bring the best of you to her."
Joanne Pittaway, Chess News

New York Pots

NYC Ferry

"New York acts like it's a big melting pot, 'cause it's like all the different cultures, 'Oh, we all melt together.' And then you move here and you realize it's not a melting pot at all. It's actually a bunch of pots that want to live next to their own kinds of pots and not talk to other pots."
Nate Bargatze, Comedy Central

New York Voltage

West 34th

"There was a much higher voltage to New York than you feel on Long Island—even just walking around the giant metal forest in whose shadow we all lived. The strangest thing about coming to Manhattan after a life in the suburbs: it's never really dark outside. Not ever."
Darin Strauss, Half a Life

Manhattan Promise

Manhattan seen from Long Island City

"He'd grown up looking at the shiny promise of Manhattan from the other side of the water. He'd blocked out the incessant barking of dogs, the sounds of shouting in the street, the honking of car horns and had stared enviously at a different life. Looking across the fast-flowing tidal stretch that was the East River, he'd seen buildings reaching up to the sky and wanted to live across the water, where skyscrapers stood tall, where glass reflected light and ambition."
Sarah Morgan, Sleepless in Manhattan

Crazy Surprise

McGraw-Hill waterfall tunnel

"No matter how many years I spend in this city, it's always got another crazy surprise up its sleeve."
Maria Baez (Marisa Ramirez), Blue Bloods

Woman's City

Rose Hill

"London is a man's city, New York a woman's city, but in spite of St James's and Savile Row I believe that a man has a better time in New York, simply because it is a woman's city. There is greater immediate warmth and friendliness; there is also greater intimacy."

Alec Waugh, My Brother Evelyn & Other Profiles

East New York

East New York (Wikipedia)

"East New York: not really New York and not east of anything. Really just the heart of Brooklyn, its heart and soul, a place without pretense or hope."
Michael Stephens, The Brooklyn Book of the Dead

City of Strangers

Stephen Sondheim Theater

"It's a city of strangers,
Some come to work, some to play.
A city of strangers,
Some come to stare, some to stay.
And every day
The ones who stay
And they'll find each other
In the crowded streets and the guarded park."
Stephen Sondheim, Company

Forbidden City

Third Avenue

"When you're poor New York is a forbidden city. You can't go to movies regularly. You can't afford real dinners or drinks out anywhere nice. You can't really shop. Doors close, doormen frown, psychic salespeople sniff and ignore you."
Adam Davies, The Frog King

New York Visitors

Pier 17

"Visitors always think New York is like their town, but bigger. New York is not like any other town. It is all dupes, all risky, and its own theatre."
Ethan Mordden, Buddies

City Love

Broadway

"That’s the thing about New Yorkers. Always talking about how much you love your city. Here in Chicago, we just do."
Rahm Emanuel, Politico

New York Air

"New York is who I am, who I'll always be. When you meet someone born and bred in New York, you can spot them a mile off. We just give off that New York air."
Huey Morgan, Huey Morgan’s Rebel Heroes

Excellence

"It is in New York that excellence is spotted, and rewarded; and when excellence fades, New York instantly, without a moment's remorse, turns its head away, looking for the latest corporate, artistic, or athletic bloom."
William F. Buckley Jr., New York Magazine

Vortex

"New York is becoming a kind of vortex: whatever boils over anywhere else in the world spills into New York. Elsewhere they make men flee, but here they welcome the fleeing man with a smile."
José Martí, Selected Writings

Emigrants

JFK airport

"We're the emigrant couple that New Yorkers always talk about. The what-if people who left New York after musing for years about somewhere warmer, quieter, softer. Dreaming about bailing is the city's favorite pastime, of course, right after obsessing about real estate prices, hating the Red Sox, and complaining about those giant fucking golf umbrellas on the sidewalk."
Amy Haimerl, Village Voice

Battle and Meditation

Fort Jay

"New York is so big that a battle might go on at one end, and poets meditate sonnets at another."
Wallace Stevens, Letters of Wallace Stevens