New York Stamina

"September 11 showed what the city is made of. but in less dramatic times, as well, the New York way of life mixes difficulty with patience (belied by a surface irritability) to produce a unique sort of stamina."
Roger Rosenblatt, Where We Stand

Keeping Up with the Joneses

Wall Street (Pixabay)

"Keeping up with the Joneses became a real stress because nothing is normal on Wall Street, you know. There's never enough cash in New York."
Henry Hamilton, Us: Americans Talk About Love

Rushing

Times Square (Pixabay)

"I like New York during the day when everyone is rushing somewhere, and I like New York at night when everyone is still rushing somewhere but it's probably to a play or a concert or the opera."
Gail Petersen, The Making of a Monster

City of Adventurers

Chambers Street subway station (Wikimedia Commons)

"New York is partly a city of adventurers, many of the more wealthy and notable citizens having come to it nearly penniless, and made their way to riches and renown through the most indomitable perseverance."
William Chambers, Stories of Remarkable Persons

Self-Involved

"I don't know if it's Manhattan or the world at large that's gotten like this: wealthy, pathologically self-involved. Shiny in a glassy, organized religion kind of way."
Maggie Estep, Hex

United Nations General Assembly

United Nations

"There are lots of foreign leaders here in New York City for the UN. It's that special time of the year when New Yorkers get road rage, then realize they just flipped off the King of Norway."
Jimmy Fallon, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

Trip into Limbo

"Visiting New York was like a trip into limbo, a maze of the lonely, the aloof, and the mad."
Randy Wayne White, Deadly in New York

Grand New York

Grand Central Terminal (Pixabay)

"My first impression has proved perdurable, that New York is a frightening but glorious place.  The time of my visit lay on the border between summer and autumn, not a part of the New York Season. Still I thought it grand."
Seidenstic, Tokyo Central

There is No Place Like New York

"There really is no place in the world quite like New York. For generations, its dark beauty and inimitable power have stirred men and women to the depths of their souls, seeming the very embodiment of all ambition, all aspiration, all romance, all desire."
Ric Burns, Thirteen

Paradox

"The city of New York is difficult to describe or understand save in terms of paradox, and so, perhaps, it is more satisfactory, for those who may, to instinctively feel the metropolis rather than to attempt to comprehend her” .
Carl van Vechten, Parties

Almost a Drug

“I love New York and I love New Yorkers. There are probably two billion people right now who are just dying to get here. New York is almost a drug. It amplifies you.”
Hans Honschar, Street Easy

New York is a Trap

"New York is vast, hideous, and strewn with the wrecks of lost and fidgeting souls. It's a trap, venomous, and woe to the person who stays here too long."
William Styron, Selected Letters of William Styron

Persecuted Minority

Dumbo

"As a group, Brooklynites form a persecuted minority; the uninventive persistence of not very urbane clowns has made any mention of their homeland a signal for compulsory guffaws; their dialect, appearance and manners have become, by way of such side-splitting propaganda, synonymous with the crudest, most vulgar aspects of contemporary life."
Truman Capote, Portraits and Observations

Twin Towers

Tribute in Light (Wikimedia Commons)

"Although the two towers have disappeared, they have not been annihilated. Even in their pulverized state, they have left behind an intense awareness of their presence. No one who knew them can cease imagining them and the imprint they made on the skyline from all points of the city. Their end in material space has borne them off into a definitive imaginary space. By the grace of terrorism, the World Trade  Center has become the world's most beautiful building — the eighth wonder of the world!"
Jean Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism and Other Essays

New York Energy

"New York is awesome, too. There's so much energy, half the time I felt like the city was dragging me around by the collar."
Stephen Solomita, Angel Face

Great Big Apple

"The world has a core and it's inside a great big apple – shiny, delicious and so big you can never take too many bites out of it. I heart New York."
Graham Norton, The Life and Loves of a He Devil

Mecca

Times Square (Pixabay)

"New York is the world's Mecca, and people from everywhere flock to it, not just on Ramadan, but all year long." 
José María Carrascal, quoted in Humanos y marcianos en Nueva York

Phenomenon

Lower Manhattan (Pixabay)

"Like a mountain or a great sea, New York is a phenomenon. Take it or leave it. Or, as Dorothy Parker once said about something else, both."
Gilbert Seldes and Leigh Irwin, This is New York

New York Sameness

"New York crushes you. You can't breathe. It's not the noise and dust, nor the traffic, nor the crowds – it's the appalling flatness, ugliness, monotony and sameness of everything. The walls bear down on you."
Henry Miller, Aller Retour New York

American Idea

Sidewalk in Greenwich Village

"America has had a tortured, even antagonistic relationship with our city over the years, but to an astonishing number of people from Michigan, Maine, and Nebraska, the five boroughs are a living embodiment of what the United States is all is all about: diversity, tolerance, and equality under the law. Alone among American cities, New York is more than just a place or an agglomeration of people. It is also an idea."
Paul Auster, Talking to Strangers

Gigantsm

Manhattan (Pixabay)

"What's unsettling when you arrive in New York is its gigantism, which finds relief only in the reflections of the illuminated apartment buildings in the water at night, from Brooklyn. A short jaunt through the body of an urban giant that flattens you."
Kamel Daoud, Chroniques: Selected Columns, 2010-2016