New York City Morning

Columbia University

"A New York City morning is always clean. The eyes get washed. Flowers in white deli buckets are replenished. The population bathes, in marble mausoleums of Upper East Side showers, or in Greenwich Village tubs, or in the sink of a Chinatown one-bedroom crammed with fifteen people."
Jardine Libaire, White Fur

Created Concept

Great Jones Street

"There is no New York—it's just like a concept that you've created for it; it's like eight million moods."

Christopher Bollen, The Rumpus

Scary Notion

Coney Island - Stillwell Avenue subway station

"Think how just the notion of New York scares people, how it is the City of Dreadful Night for some and Fun City for others. Like any huge city, New York is many things: Babylon, Xanadu, a jungle, a horror, a pleasure, a snake pit, a nuisance."
Paul Theroux, The Best American Travel Writing 2001

New York Under Rain

Third Avenue

"I preferred New York under rain. It made winter days warmer and summer days cooler. It made the spring sad and the autumn sad in the exact same way. Like its sound, it leveled seasons. The years smashed together in New York."
Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora

Haven for the Ambitious

"Manhattan is a haven for the ambitious, and you must not expect its bustling rivalries to be too saintly. Indeed, you may as well admit that the whole place is built on greed, in one degree or another; even the city churches, grotesquely  Gothic or Anglican beyond belief, have their thrusting social aspirations."
Jan Morris, Coast to Coast

New York vs. London

Met Life Tower

"London is a wide flat pie of redbrick suburbs with the West End stuck in the middle like a currant. New York is a huge rich raisin, and is the biggest city I can imagine."
Brendan Behan, The Wit of Brendan Behan

New York Animals

Alwyn Court

"I live in New York and the only live animals you see are cockroaches, rats and pigeons, which I admire immensely. When I see an animal that thrives in the garbage I feel relief."
Isabella Rossellini, Time Out London

Inconvenience

Apartments on East 23rd

"It is an inconvenience, being located in a city where taxes are ludicrously high, where you pay twice your annual income to rent an apartment that could easily be carried on a commercial airline flight, where you spend two-thirds of your work day trying to get to and from work."
Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits

The Lullaby of Broadway

Broadway and 122nd

"Come on along and listen to
The lullaby of Broadway.
The hip hooray and bally hoo,
The lullaby of Broadway.
The rumble of the subway train,
The rattle of the taxis.
The daffy-dills who entertain
Until the dawn."
Al Dubin, The Lullaby of Broadway

Egyptian Majesty

"Like fixed massed sentinels guarding the approaches to the great metropolis, again the pyramids of New York in their Egyptian majesty dazzled my sight like a miracle of might and took my breath like the banging music of Wagner assaulting one's spirit and rushing it skyward with the pride and power of an eagle."
Claude McKay, A Long Way From Home

New York Money

Fifth Avenue

"When I arrived in New York, the money I saw flabbergasted me. It sashayed on Fifth Avenue and giggled in galleries and generally showed itself off with such unabashed glee that it was impossible not to admire it or envy it, at least a little."
Siri Hustvedt, Yonder

Cauldron of Creativity

Alphabet City

"New York was an open-ended cauldron of creativity. You were not just encouraged to do something completely different and completely off the wall, it was almost necessary to get anybody's attention."
Kris Needs, Dream Baby Dream

Americans of America

Oculus

"New York dominates the whole of the Western hemisphere and weights securely the Eastern coast of the map, and because of this weight and importance, New Yorkers fancy they are the Americans of America, but New York is not half as typically American as Chicago."
Emily Post, Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners

New York Groove

Broadway

"Many years since I was here, on the street I was passin' my time away
To the left and to the right, buildings towering to the sky
It's outta sight in the dead of night
Here I am, again in this city, with a fistful of dollars
And baby, you'd better believe
I'm back, back in the New York Groove
I'm back, back in the New York Groove."
Kiss, New York Groove

Love at First Sight

Trump Tower

"It was love at first sight, the powerful, instant thrill of realizing we were born to be together and that our passion would never fade. I'm talking about New York City, of course. As soon as I saw it for the first time, I knew I'd found a place with an energy that matched my own."
Ivana Trump, Raising Trump

Miscreant

Sixth Avenue

"Everyone in New York seemed like a miscreant. Even the little old ladies—most of them looked as if they were running some scam."
Brian Morton, Florence Gordon

Becoming

Financial District

"One of the great things about New York is it's not a static thing. It's not 'New York is...' New York is always becoming."
Kenneth T. Jackson, quoted in New York: Episode 9

New York Survey

Number one train

"A new survey found that the average New York City resident had sex 27.6 times a year. And for those of you from out of town, that .6 just comes from riding the subway."
Seth Meyers, Late Night with Seth Meyers

Legendary

FDR Drive

"Despite all the books I've read, the films, the photographs, the stories, New York is a legendary city in my past; there is no path from the reality to the legend. Across from old Europe, on the threshold of a continent populated by 160 million people, New York belongs to the future."
Simone de Beauvoir, America Day by Day

February in New York

"It was February outside the window—the worst part of the year in New York City. By that time of winter, everything is cold; everything hurts. Every inch of stone in the buildings and sidewalks and streets is frozen through, solidly bitter to the touch, or even to be near. Manhattan snowscapes may look pretty in the movie theater or on TV, but walking just a few blocks in the reality of its biting canyon winds can take the romance out of the scene quick—as can just looking out the window."
C.J. Henderson, Nine Dragons

Brooklyn Thug

"An old Brooklyn thug motto: 'Manhattan makes it and Brooklyn takes it.'"
C.J. Sullivan, Wild Tales from the Police Blotter

Pressure Cooker

Ed Sullivan Theater

"Can we assume that any New Yorker buying a pressure cooker is up to no good? No one who lives here cooks. In fact, if you don't have a Seamless account, the FBI has some questions for you."
Stephen Colbert, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

New York Personality

Times Square (Pixabay)

"New York does not aim to be a replica of any foreign metropolis. She has her own personality, her own aggressive individualism; she is the City of the Towers as well as the City of the Sleepless Eye."
Edward Hungerford, The Personality of American Cities

New York Smell

Third Avenue

"I'm trying to let everything in. I want to hear New York rather than some song I downloaded. I want to smell New York. Well—New York smells like garbage. Vietnamese garbage, Mexican garbage, Lithuanian garbage, Nigerian garbage, all within a three-block walk."
Jennifer Echols, Love Story

Concrete Bunghole

30 Rockefeller Plaza

"You can try to change New York, but it's like Jay-Z says: 'Concrete bunghole where dreams are made up, there's nothing you can do.'"
Liz Lemon (Tina Fey), 30 Rock

No Escape

North Williamsburg

"You are born in the capital of the world and you can never escape and that's how it is because that's how everyone wants it to be. It is all about want. No one needs anything here."

Nick McDonell, Twelve

Freak Show

Soho

"New York City is a strange place. It always has been. Like an endless urban freak show, there are new and interesting characters populating its streets and venues daily."
Bucky Turco, Mass Appeal

Subways of New York

Subway tracks in Brooklyn

"If pressed, I’d have to say that what I love most about the subways of New York is what they do not do. One may spend a lifetime looking back—whether regretfully or wistfully, with shame or fondness or sorrow—and thinking how, given the chance, you might have done things differently. But when you enter a subway car and the doors close, you have no choice but to give yourself over to where it is headed. The subway only goes one way: forward."
Bill Hayes, Insomniac City