Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Tunnel Vision

Riverside Park

"I like now that weird tunnel vision you get when you're in New York. The constant running into people you know, no matter where you are and no matter what time it is; it's a performance of Our Town that never ends, complete with ever-present death and an omniscient narrator who will eventually turn out to be James Franco."
Zachary Lipez, Vice

Monday, October 30, 2017

Sage

Teachers College

"New York is a teacher, a sage teaching life lessons. For instance, I've learned to notice carefully. The city is only persecuting those who try to control it. To enjoy life in New York is to be an associate of chaos."
Timothy Levitch, Getting the Whole Story

Sunday, October 29, 2017

The Plague

St. Ann's Warehouse


"New York seemed older than the cities of Europe, a sadistic gift of the sixteenth century, ever on the verge of plague."
Don DeLillo, Great Jones Street

Saturday, October 28, 2017

Easy to Have

North Williamsburg landing


"The whole city flung out in front of us the way street vendors fling out their towels packed with cheap, glittery watches and belts. That's how New York looked: like a gorgeous, easy thing to have."
Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

Friday, October 27, 2017

Lottery Ticket

Times Square (Pixabay)


"To walk along Broadway is like being a ticket in a lottery — a ticket in a glass barrel, being tossed about with all the other tickets. There are eyes everywhere."
Maeve Brennan, The Long-Winded lady

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Eccentrics

Washington Square Park


"I guess New York is a really good place for eccentrics. I think when you walk along the streets in the Village and there seems to be a good collection of eccentrics that didn't fit in where they were born, so they decided to move to New York, I quite like that."
Björk, CMJ New Music Monthly

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

New York in Black and White

Brooklyn Bridge


"I remember seeing New York in black and white films. Growing up, we watched a lot of old movies and I saw a lot of skylines. I also read a lot of comic books, and I thought that Gotham was New York City. I had it in my mind that I belonged there from a pretty early age. There were lots of cliché small-town-boy-wants-to-move-to-the-big-city-and-do-his-thing kind of things about me moving here, but I'm not embarrassed about any of it. That's how it works. That's how it should be."
Ryan Adams, quoted in Meet Me in the Bathroom

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Complicated



"Everything about life in New York is complicated. From weaving through the nincompoops at Penn Station to dodging crickets on the D train, an NYC existence is nonstop, neurotic and in-your-face."
Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post

Monday, October 23, 2017

New York Weather



"I'm from New York, where the weather is only nice two days a year, and do you know what we do on those two days? We stay inside and work, because we're New Yorkers and we’ve got too much stuff to do to care that it's lovely outside."
Susanna Wolff, The New Yorker

Sunday, October 22, 2017

Feral Design

Midtown (Pixabay)

"Nowhere else equals the feral design of this city. Tall skyscrapers that act as gorges hollowing out between flat cement dancing into narrow alleyways like bottomless pits. Building walls rusted the color of blood. Sometimes when you look down the horizon from afar the city looks wider than it is, like a thin field of magical lights gleaming with the hopes of children and idealists; a light on at midnight in one of the penthouses or the changing hues of the Empire State Building."
Bruce Crown, How Dim the Promised Land

Saturday, October 21, 2017

Forced Interaction

Sixth Avenue


"To live in New York is to live in a city that’s constantly forcing you to interact with people. Even if you’re in the throes of terrible depression, New York smashes you up against all sorts of other people, no matter how much money you might have spent in order to isolate yourself in, say, a penthouse apartment."
Todd VanDerWerff, Vox

Friday, October 20, 2017

Permissible

Madison Square Park


"In New York, everything was permissible. No one cared hat you wore, how you looked. Only you cared about those things. And if they didn't worry you, then they didn't matter."
Georgia Clark, The Regulars

Thursday, October 19, 2017

Brooklyn Smell

Kent Avenue

"Brooklyn smells like a combination of an ocean breeze, Calvin Klein Eternity, and weed. It might be my favorite smell ever."
Jillian Dodd, The Keatyn Chronicles

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Endless City


"New York, New York looked like a city with no end, a city that threw a haze into the night sky, making the low clouds golden and the water shimmer like colored smoke."
Tom Hanks, Uncommon Type

Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Prison

Castle Williams

"New York is a self-imposed prison where people convince themselves to live in rat-infested shoeboxes that each cost more than a mansion in the Poconos. Then they spend every summer getting on overheated, nonfunctional trains to vacation where every other New Yorker is vacationing."
Drew Magary, Deadspin

Monday, October 16, 2017

Poise and Purpose


"He could see the city skyline in its entirety - the whole staggered assembly of townhouses and warehouses and skyscrapers stretching from Washington Heights to the Battery. Nearly every light in every window in every building seemed to be shimmering and tenuous - as if powered by the animal spirits within - by the arguments and endeavours, the whims and elisions. But here and there, scattered across mosaic, were also the isolated windows that seemed to burn a little brighter and more constant - the windows lit by those few who acted with poise and purpose."
Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

Sunday, October 15, 2017

So Many Ways to Die

Third Avenue

"There are so many ways to die in New York City, c'mon! Subway crashes, drive-by shootings, race riots, construction cranes collapsing on the sidewalks, manhole covers blowing up and asbestos shooting into the sky."
Denis Leary, No Cure for Cancer

Saturday, October 14, 2017

Happy Heart


"It is strange that Americans have never adopted the English habit of carrying umbrellas, for New York is quite able to produce a cloud-burst out of the sky on the most clement day. When, however, the sun shines in New York, be it warm or cold, the heart is happy, and it is probable that the sun shines more often there than in any other capital of the world."
Carl van Vechten, Parties: Scenes from Contemporary New York Life

Friday, October 13, 2017

Money Drain



"New York is an aching scum hole, a never-closing maw always willing to let anyone—no matter how corrupt, or illiterate, or evil— call it home and hang up their shingle. It is a giant con, a government owned-and-operated money drain, constantly sucking the life and joy and wealth out of its inhabitants the way a dying man sucks oxygen—greedily, as if each breath were the last."
C.J. Henderson, Bread Ahead

Thursday, October 12, 2017

Hub of America

Times Squae

"I always have a positive reaction to Times Square—you've got so many people passing through here, so many cultures, and so many people merging into the central community of New York City. This is the hub of America."
Dhani Jones, Men's Health

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Warm Embrace

American Copper Buildings


"I am here as a speck, but I don't feel scared or about to be blown away, I feel like all New York is a warm embrace just waiting to enfold me. "
Ann-Marie MacDonald, Fall on Your Knees

Tuesday, October 10, 2017

Shared Landscape

40/40 Club


"New York has a thousand universes in it that don't always connect but we do all walk the same streets, hear the same sirens, ride the same subways, see the same headlines in the Post, read the same writings on the walls. That shared landscape gets inside of all of us and, in some small way, unites us, makes us think we know each other even when we don't."
Jay-Z, Decoded

Monday, October 9, 2017

Way of Moving

Union Square


"New Yorkers have a special way of moving. They advance ever forward. By gliding. Little sailboats catching the wind."
Sarah Schulman, The Cosmopolitans

Sunday, October 8, 2017

Handsome Man




"New York was like a wealthy, handsome, intensely artistic, complex, slightly manic man who, for some inexplicable reason, was enthralled with me. Not that I ever met a man like that. Who needed men anyway? I'll take Manhattan."
Kim Addonizio, Bukowski in a Sundress

Saturday, October 7, 2017

Fitting In



"I will always feel gratitude and astonishment that Manhattan allowed me to make my home there. It's still the only place I've been where I feel, in some strange way, that I fit in. Or maybe, that it's the place where I least feel that I don't fit it."
Roz Chast, Going into Town

Friday, October 6, 2017

Anthrax



"We ain't scared of no terrorists, man. This is New York City. We ain't scared of no anthrax. Anthrax? Please. I get on the A train."
Sherrod Small, Comedy Central

Thursday, October 5, 2017

Disappeared and Found



"I discovered this was the best thing about New York: you could run away every day if you wanted to and still find yourself in a newly incarnated version of the city. You never had to be the same person. You could disappear and be found all at once."
Patricia Engel, Never Can Say Goodbye

Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Fast Track

East River Waterfront


"Life in New York is life on the fast track, and, sadly, friendship, however treasured, sometimes appears like an obstacle smack in the middle of the course."
Linda Wolfe, New York Magazine

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

Temptations

Port Authority

"New York is the easiest city in the world to get out of; and in the perfect weather of the fall, an interlude of exquisite peace and beauty between summer heat and winter frost, it is a city surrounded by temptations to get out of it."
Iza Duffus Hardy. Between Two Oceans

Monday, October 2, 2017

Autumn in New York City

Riverside Park

"I love autumn in New York City: The yellows, the browns, and the rustand that's just the drinking water... Here in New York City, the leaves turnand run."
David Letterman, Stand Up Comedy Portal


Sunday, October 1, 2017

Ambitious



"New York was populated by the ambitious. It was often the only thing that everyone here had in common."
Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life