Wednesday, May 31, 2017

New York Irony



"Look, it's New York: you can do whatever the bleep you please. Ride your bike in a bikini with a snake as a necklace (it was hot that day, she was en route to the pet sitter, and he really likes to go for rides). The closer one is to the absurd, the more irony—a cultivated, intentional thing—looks kind of earnest. All that time put in to make an impression, all that care taken to seem not to care!"
Lia Purpura, Brief Encounters

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Shrinked

The High Line (Photo: Pixabay)

"This is New York! Everyone and his mother has a shrink. You're a freak if you don't have one."
Leonard Simon, Dissociated States

Monday, May 29, 2017

Magnificent

Broadway


"New York is more magnificent than ever. What a city! And how pleasant relations with people are! How easy everything is – even crossing the street!"
Simone de Beauvoir, Letters to Sartre

Sunday, May 28, 2017

New York Vendors



"Vendors unfold their wares of Chinese rabbit-fur hats, sunglasses, cheap leather gloves or scarves. Name a problem, they sell solutions. The vendors seem connected, by instant wire, to fate. If the oceans rise and New York is flooded one day, they'll produce at that moment rubber rafts and life jackets. Fishing line and hooks, to sell residents as they flee."
Ethan Black, The Broken Hearts Club

Saturday, May 27, 2017

Brazenness



"Brazenness is in itself not to be condemned. In New York it is a necessary ingredient of success. You see it in the face of the Tammany politician, the Wall-street broker, the hotel manager, the subway director. Brazenness has been evolved in the struggle for existence in this chaos called Manhattan and it sits there in our faces by divine right. It is an asset. It will cow the world in time."
Benjamin De Casseres, New York is Hell

Friday, May 26, 2017

New York Feelings

House on East 18th


"New York had never frightened her. Annoyed her, yes. Pissed her off, occasionally. Disgusted and amazed her on a regular basis. But never scared her."
Nevada Barr, Liberty Falling

Thursday, May 25, 2017

Confusion

Williamsburg


"The main thing I've noticed most about New York is that people who live here have no idea how anyone else in America lives, thinks or manages to survive. They seem to assume rural Americans mostly sit in barren 12x12 aluminum rooms and stare at mounted elk carcasses. However, it's worth noting that the rest of the country has the same confusion about New Yorkers, particularly in regard to their level of general rudeness (and cast members from the 1979 film ''The Warriors''). It has been my experience that strangers in New York are exceedingly friendly, almost to the point of being weirdly insecure."
Chuck Klosterman, The New York Times

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Sodom and Gomorrah

House on East 18th


"New York City is just another name for Sodom and Gomorrah. Why, when Jesus returns in the year 2000, just like Granddaddy Ellsworth says, he won't even stop to take a leak in New York City."
Vera Jane Cook, Dancing Backward in Paradise

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Heart of the City



"A wild sky above great parallel rails—that, first and foremost, is New York. In the heart of the city, you are in the heart of nature."
Jean-Paul Sartre, We Have Only This Life to Live

Monday, May 22, 2017

Being Alone

Midtown Manhattan


"New York City is often thought to be such a lonely city and there's a lot to say on that subject, but there is much more to say on the subject that New York City is a city in which you can't be alone, in which you'd pay to be alone, from the morning crowded subways, to the elevators up the skyscrapers, and the crowded offices and cubicles and bank lines and post-office lines and lunch-counter lines and movie lines and sheer rubbing shoulders with the eleven million who use Manhattan every day, what you wouldn't give to be ALONE."
Wilton Barnhardt, Emma Who Saved My Life

Sunday, May 21, 2017

New York Cartography

Lexington Avenue

"Every New Yorker has his own idiosyncratic system of cartography, his personal method of charting the points of correspondence between the external city and the landmarks of his interior streetscape. No surveyor's equipment is necessary, just a wry acceptance of the ephemeral. For many of us, the resulting map is a distorted but truthful rendering of New York in which vanished buildings and storefronts are as present as surviving ones, even more so."
John Freeman Gill, The Gargoyle Hunters

Saturday, May 20, 2017

Anomaly

Midtown (Photo: Pixabay)

"New York is a hyperkinetic fishbowl anomaly of possibilities in and of itself; every other global metropolis is but an Off-Broadway production, nicely reviewed but lacking megawatt star power."
Tamara N. Houston, Waiting for Jules

Friday, May 19, 2017

Enchanted Kingdom



"His conscious mind could find no logical path between the Port Authority bus terminal and what had to be some kind of enchanted kingdom. New York, New York. It's a wonderful town. That was for damn sure."
Lee Child, High Heat

Thursday, May 18, 2017

Blight



"New York is a blight on my heart, lost, a street full of lights fading to a bonfire."
William Carlos Williams, The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams: 1909-1939

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

New York Pride

Bryant Park (Photo: Pixabay)

"New Yorkers are proud of New York. They are unwilling to permit strangers who merely move to the city to declare themselves New Yorkers until they have lived here sufficiently long to have achieved something or done their bit in adding to New York's prestige."
William Parker Chase, quoted in Capital: New York, Capital of the 20th Century

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Unnatural Conditions

Long Island City

"The trouble with New York is that it imposes a set of unnatural conditions. Nobody knows anybody, even when they live next door to each other. You can make your home here for fifty years and still feel a stranger. I know I do."
Hamilton Basso, The View from Pompey's Head

Monday, May 15, 2017

Helpful New Yorkers

Broadway


"If you are confused ask somebody. New Yorkers are very helpful. However, the first person you ask will give you the wrong answer. So ask loudly enough that others will overhear and make corrections. New Yorkers love to correct each other."
George Weller, quoted in New York: The Big Apple Quote Book

Sunday, May 14, 2017

Striving for Discomfort



"I love the city. I've spent my life here, and I don't think I could survive anywhere else. There's so much good here. I love how diverse it is. I love being exposed to so many different types of people and ideas. I love the competitiveness and energy (although that also gets exhausting as well, so it's love-hate). I love the culture, the weirdness, and the arts that are still here. People here are tough and it takes a lot to make them uncomfortable. I like making myself uncomfortable when I can and this city allows me to do that. I feel like in other places people strive to be comfortable, while here people strive to be uncomfortable."
James Maher, 6sqft

Saturday, May 13, 2017

Friday, May 12, 2017

Part of Humanity

East 14th


"The thing I love about New York is that I feel I'm part of humanity here. In L.A., everyone is in the same business. Here, you can't go on a subway or walk the streets without bumping into people who are of a different race, religion, or socioeconomic level. It makes me feel small in a way that feels healthy."
Debra Messing, Haute Living

Thursday, May 11, 2017

Nostalgia and Cupcakes

Rose Hill


"A defining characteristic of the true New Yorker is enthusiastic complaining about how the city has changed for the worse since its former days of glory. My idealized New York is that of the Lower East Side in the mid seventies–early punk, bohemia, drugs and danger. I knew that things had changed a lot since then, but was still surprised–is it really necessary to have such widespread access to cupcakes?"
Conor Horgan, Narratively

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Seventh Birthday

Mets-Willets Point station

NY Daily Quote turns seven! Which in blog years is probably... well, old. So we're taking the day off and instead of bringing you a new quote, we're looking back and some of the funniest things people have said, and written, about NYC.


1. "I can be a true New Yorker. I'll go to the gym, and then I'll eat a bagel, and then... I'll shoot someone, maybe?"
Sophie Kinsella, Shopaholic Takes Manhattan

2. "New Yorkers take pride in living in the city that never sleeps—unfortunately, it's also the city that never showers, brushes its teeth, or has good aim when it pees."
Bill Maher, Does Anybody Have a Problem with That?

3. "New York: the only city where people make radio requests like 'This is for Tina — I'm sorry I stabbed you.'"
Carol Leifer, The Great American Bathroom Reader

4. "New York is very rough. They write themes on: 'What I stole over my summer vacation.'"
Joan Rivers, quoted in The City

5. "Being a New Yorker is never having to say you are sorry."
Lily Tomlin, quoted in That's Funny!

6. "People who live in New York, we wear that fact like a badge right on our sleeve, 'cause we know that fact impresses everybody. "I was in Vietnam." "So what? I live in New York."
Denis Leary, That’s Really Funny

7. "I like New York. This is the only city where you actually have to say things like, 'Hey, that's mine. Don't pee on that.'"
Louis C.K., Comedy Central

8. "We may well point the finger of scorn at those who taunt us with being devoted to the gratification of our senses. New York devoted to the senses! Why, it is not even courteous to the senses: it does not so much as hold its nose!"
Josiah Gilbert Holland, Every-day Topics

9. "Being miserable and treating other people like dirt is every New Yorker's God-given right."
The Mayor (David Margulies), Ghostbusters 2

10. "Tourism in New York is a multi-billion-dollar industry partly predicated on a kind of safari model. They're going to be disappointed if they don't get close to the lions and tigers, but really disappointed if one of them eats them. It's a fine line."
Garrett Moore (Gregory Jbara), Blue Bloods

11. "I moved to New York for health reasons. I'm paranoid and New York is the only place where my fears are justified."
Anita Weiss, quoted in Words from the Wise

12. "The Bronx? No thonx."
Ogden Nash, quoted in 2320 Funniest Quotes

13. "New Yorkers like to boast that if you can survive in New York, you can survive anywhere. But if you can survive anywhere, why live in New York?"
Edward Abbey, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

14. "Living in New York is like being at some terrible late-night party. You're tired, you've had a headache since you arrived, but you can't leave because then you'd miss the party."
Simon Hoggart, America: A User’s Guide

15. "One thing I love about living in New York is it's every different type of person piled one on top of the other. I am for open immigration, but that sign we have in the front of the Statue of Liberty, 'Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.' Can't we just say, 'Hey, the door's open. We'll take whoever you got.' Do we have to specify 'The wretched refuse?'"
Jerry Seinfeld, Seinlanguage

16. "It's so loud. All the time. Yes, it's the city that never sleeps. Well, guess what? I like to sleep! I've been tired for eight years!"
Marshall Eriksen (Jason Segel), How I Met Your Mother

17. "The reason New Yorkers are depressed is because the light at the end of the tunnel is New Jersey."
Garrison Keillor,  Pretty Good Joke Book

18. "Living in California adds ten years to a man's life. And those extra ten years I'd like to spend in New York."
Harry Ruby, quoted in The Traveling Curmedgeon


Thanks for reading NY Daily Quote, for your comments and friendship. Here's to the next seven years!


Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Exquisite



"I really think New York is exquisite.
It isn't all right just for a visit
But by God's Grace
I'd live in it and like it even better if you gave me the place."
Ogden Nash, I Speak of the City: Poems of New York

Monday, May 8, 2017

Keeping Up with the Rothschilds

Vanderbilt Avenue

"The trouble with New York is, we're not keeping up with the Joneses; we're keeping up with the Rothschilds."
"Tom," quoted in New York Magazine

Sunday, May 7, 2017

Collective Love

East Village

"The mysteriously human element about this place can make you fall in love and break your heart at the same time. When you hear her sound, when you breathe in her scent, you share it with all the people walking beside you on the street, in the subway, or gazing from a tall building across Central Park. You know at once that you are alive, and that life is beautiful, precious, and fleeting. I think that's why people in New York feel so connected to each other; the city harnesses this collective love and admiration."
Renee Carlino, Before We Were Strangers

Saturday, May 6, 2017

Cannibal Island



"As I drew near New York I was first amused, and then somewhat staggered, by the cautious and grisly tales that went around. You would have thought we were to land upon a cannibal island. You must speak to no one in the streets, as they would not leave you till you were rooked and beaten."
Robert Louis Stevenson, Collected Memoirs, Travel Sketches and Island Literature of Robert Louis Stevenson

Friday, May 5, 2017

Same New York

Fifth Avenue


"Of course we rebuild New York. And of course it stays the same: impossible, glorious, money-mad, ruled by real estate yet pocked with the weird and the desperate."
Alan Scherstuhl, The Village Voice

Thursday, May 4, 2017

New York Citizenship

JFK Airport


"You know what's great about New York? The threshold for citizenship as a New Yorker is actually pretty short. If you come to New York and you still like it two years after you arrived here, and you still think it's great and you're having a good time and you haven't been just totally ground down and go limping back to wherever the fuck you came from, you know what? You're in!"
Anthony Bourdain, The Layover

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Oasis



"There is beauty in New York, but it is isolated and artificial and carefully nurtured. Beauty in New York is a momentary oasis in a vast desert of ugliness."
Webb Chiles, A Single Wave

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Permanent



"New York, on the surface the most volatile and kaleidoscopic of cities, is in essence, I think, peculiarly permanent. Contrary to the popular view, in fundamentals it really changes very little down the generations."
Jan Morris, The Great Port

Monday, May 1, 2017

Surprising Beauty



"New York suddenly took on a very surprising beauty to him, a chrome-colored shine he never thought he would see there: the streets gleamed; the long views down the avenues continually took him unawares, the great majestic corridors that narrowed in the distance as though all the structures there made by man, the colossal skyscrapers and shining granite department stores as bright as mirrors, were pointing toward the monumental buildings downtown, the great human feats of steel and engineering."
Ethan Canin, For Kings and Planets