New York Past

“In New York City real estate parlors took your money and lied to you, drug addicts relieved themselves in plain sight, and the Public Library was closed on Mondays.” 
Tom Hanks, Uncommon Type

Fun City

Luna Park

"New York is fun. Like Disney Land. Fun."
Michael Lieberman, West Side Stories

Psychological Privacy

Flatiron Plaza

"If the other passengers noticed that she was crying, they pretended not to, which Laura appreciated. People who thought New Yorkers were cold and uncaring didn't understand that in a city like this, one's physical proximity to strangers necessitated a respect of their psychological privacy."
Kate Greathead, Laura & Emma

All Walks of Life

North Williamsburg Landing

"New Yorkers are incredibly adept at dealing with people from all walks of life. You're constantly confronted by people who are different than you so you stop seeing everybody as so different. Our country needs more of that right now."
Lela Loren, BELLA New York Magazine

Mythic Sounding

"One of the great things about New York is that it’s dotted with these ridiculously mythic-sounding settings — I mean, we have a huge garbage dump called Fresh Kills! You can’t make that up."
Adam Sternbergh, Brkyner

Public Imagination

Carlton Arms Hotel

"New York is possibly the only place in which most people have already lived, in some sense, in the public imagination, before they ever arrive."
Ling Ma, Severance

Most Ideal

Statue of Liberty

"New York is the world's greatest city and has been for a long time. Other cities have their moment but none of them come back—like Seattle had its moment. Hurray! But New York's consistently there whether it's the art or writing or music or ideas. It's the most idealized part of America, and to me it's the most ideal part."
James Murphy, New York Rock

How to Distinguish Oneself

News Corporation

"Living in New York City for five years, I had discovered the easiest way to distinguish oneself was to have a conscience or a sense of morality, since most people in Manhattan were extraordinary thieves of various standing, some of them multi-billionaires."
Patty Yumi Cottrell, Sorry to Disrupt the Peace

Potluck

West 32nd

"New York is like one big potluck party to which everyone in the entire world was invited, and everyone showed up (bringing their favorite dish). It's a friggin great city."
Holly Jennings, Dowdy Corners Cookbook Club

Energetic

Sixth Avenue

"New York is a rather energetic city, so there's immediately that hum that's under everything you do that really energizes."
Nancy Allen, Wall Street Journal

Violence

East 56th

"New York's supreme beauty, its truly unique quality, is its violence. Violence gives it nobility, excuses it, makes its vulgarity forgettable. For New York is vulgar; it is stronger, richer, newer than anything you like, but it is common."
Paul Morand, quoted in Mirror for Gotham

Solid Rock

"It is almost impossible at any season of the year or in any quarter of the city to escape the sound of blasting, which reminds one that Manhattan, like the church of Rome, is built on solid rock."
Carl Van Vechten, quoted in Capital: New York, Capital of the 20th Century

Never Finished

Fifth Avenue

"Modern New Yorkers have grown accustomed to the experience of going around the corner to what was last week's favorite delicatessen only to discover that, this week, it has become a wig shop; or finding, where the little place that sold handbags used to be, just off Lexington, that the entire block has disappeared to make room for an office tower. Faced with yet another example of the fact that New York is a restless, ever-changing, never-finished city, New Yorkers simply shrug and go on about their business."
Stephen Birmingham, Life at the Dakota

Personal Insult

National September 11 Memorial

"To look at the new skyline of New York is a personal insult. As a native New Yorker, I have always felt that I owned part of that landscape, and I would often walk the campus of Queens College thinking proudly, my city, as I gazed toward the impressive structures in the distance stretching proudly for the clouds. Now, when I look at my city, I feel a sense of emptiness; a gaping wound in my heart reopens every time I seek out the place where the Twin Towers should be."
Molly O'Connor, Art of the Restless

Grinding

East 25th

"New York is a grinding place. I love it, but the only reason to live here is to get something done."
Toby Mott, New York Magazine

Underdog

"I like being an underdog in New York, because New Yorkers love an underdog."
Bob Gaudio, Billboard

Soviet Union

"New York, like the Soviet Union, has this universal usefulness: It makes you glad you live elsewhere."
John Updike, Architectural Digest

Fever Chart

Manhattan skyline (Dmitry Avdeev)

"The Manhattan skyline glowed like peaks and valleys of a fever chart set in glass and concrete."
Peter Blauner, Slipping into Darkness

Winners of Winners

Madison Square Garden

"It was summer. She had forgotten that, too, that it was her favorite season, had forgotten the New York stickiness that had first made her love the city and its people, her people, because Manhattan was not just for the winners, but the winners of winners."
Gary Shteyngart, Lake Success

Constellation

East 42nd

"New York is a constellation of magic moments. No city as complex as New York rebuilds itself so often, and often so well."
Robert A.M. Stern, quoted in 6sqft

Real New York

Fifth Avenue

"The real New York is where little old ladies look the two hundred pounds of ol' linebacker that is me in the eye and smack into me like I'm not there — I was raised not to bump them back — where everyone is always yelling, ´Fugetaboutit, getouttamyway, and a whole array of indecipherable epithets that I think are in English and I'm sure aren't very nice."
Hal Rothman, The Culture of Tourism

Living in New York

Kips Bay Towers

"Wasn't this what living in New York was supposed to be like, the skyline, the anonymity, coexistence without intimacy?"
Anna Quindlen, Alternate Side