Freer

"The reason I came to New York and the reason most people used to come to New York, and maybe some still do, is because it is freer than wherever we came from."
Fran Lebowitz, Five Books

Holidays in New York

"I love holidays in New York. I love 'em. I want to celebrate something all the time and New York has holidays for every day of the week, practically."
Elaine Stritch, Omaha World-Herald

Spiritual Place

"I'm most at home when I can see the lights and hear the cabs going by in the middle of the night. New York is a spiritual place for me."
Cush Jumbo, Broadway.com

Vanishing New York

East 14th

"A large part of my life is walking up and down Broadway and Columbus Avenue and trying to remember what store used to be where. Look at that place over there. That's a Madison Avenue boutique. What is it doing over here? I'll be interested to see how long that lasts. The people over here, they have the money, but they’re not going to spend it. They’re too cheap."
Jerry Seinfeld, The New York Times

Pocket Edition of Babel

Manhattan

"New York is the metropolis of America, the mouth of the republic, the tongue of the nation, the eye of the continent, a pocket edition of Babel, a digest of the United States, with fewer Americans and more Americanism than any spot between Calais, Me., and the Kingdom of Heaven."

Life Magazine

Incessant Need

Morningside Heights

"In New York, just standing still on the sidewalk is a weird feeling. You have this incessant need to do things."
Esai Morales, People Magazine

Oasis of Opportunity

Central Park

"To Esperanza, New York City had always been Nueva York—an oasis of opportunity."
Angie Cruz, Let It Rain Coffee

F Train

"I'm on the Brooklyn bound F train. lt's empty this time of day. Just a few schizophrenic-looking individuals. Not that, as far as I know, schizophrenics have visible markings, just that I once heard a statistic that, of the  small percentage of Caucasian cab drivers in New York City, ninety percent are schizophrenic. I believe a similar statistic could be applied to daytime F train riders."
Maggie Estep, Hex

Artistic Element

"The artistic element of Manhattan has kind of moved to Brooklyn. Has it changed it? Yeah. Has it ruined ruined it? I would say no. It is what it is. I say better that than an urban war zone."
Julian Casablancas, The Wall Street Journal

Loveless in New York

"People don't come to New York to meet someone. They come for the culture, the experience, the money—the list is long, but meeting the man you’re going to marry isn't on it.”
Sarah Morgan, Sleepless in Manhattan

Bronx Pride

"I have 100 percent Bronx pride, like it’s a country, like I am the Bronx."
Cardi B, Billboard

Quaint

Upper West Side

"New York is still the most glamorous city I’ve ever been to but it's starting to feel older. The sirens still wail, the paths in Central Park still pulsate with joggers. The Manhattan schist still trembles beneath your feet. But weirdly it's starting to feel, dare I say it, a bit quaint."
Tom Hollander, The Spectator

Expense Account or Welfare

"Manhattan: The ultimate celebration of civilization's final finest hours, a place where you live on an expense account or on welfare; if you're somewhere in between, you move to Queens or Nassau."
Herb Caen, SF Gate

The Secret to a Long and Happy Life

"I didn't miss New York 'cause I never left, which is the secret to my long and happy life."
Henry Reagan (Len Cariou), Blue Bloods

Second-Rate Civilization

Greenpoint

"For Manhattanites, Brooklyn was the sticks, a second-rate civilization. My friends and I, we were so snobby. Living in the Bronx or Brooklyn was incredible … for me that was like a foreign country."
William Klein, The Guardian

Carnality

Coney Island

"Even after two years in New York, the raw carnality of the city stuns him, the erotic energy of so many bodies packed tightly together. He thinks of the boys and girls he's seen, kissing in the back of his cab, more turned on, it seems, with being in New York than with each other."
By A. X. Ahmad, The Last Taxi Ride

Work of Art

Flatiron Plaza

"New York is a gigantic, unbelievable, constantly changing work of art, which proves yet again that life itself is a form of art which is much stronger and more active than art-fact made by the hands of an artist."
Anatol Ur, А-Я

Purest Combustion

Seventh Avenue

"New York is the innumerable at the bottom of the indescribable; the indescribable at the bottom of the innumerable. The purest combustion of a multiple and terrible image."
Hernán Lavín Cerda, Memorias Casi Póstumas Del Cadáver Valdivia

Infinite Brooklyn

Greenpoint

"Brooklyn is walled with world-traveled wetness on west and south and on north and east is the young beaver-board frontier of Queens; Brooklyn comes to an end: but actually, that is, in the conviction of the body, there seems almost no conceivable end to Brooklyn; it seems, on land as flat and huge as Kansas, horizon beyond horizon forever unfolded, an immeasurable proliferation of house on house and street by street; or seems as China does, infinite in time, in patience, and in population as in space."
James Agee, Brooklyn Is

New York City's Character

Downtown Manhattan (Pexels)

"The traffic sounds continue to dominate, as they dominate all of Manhattan, as much a part of the city's character as the trash on the sidewalks."
Stephen Solomita, Angel Face

Minority Group

"In New York everyone belongs to a minority group. This gives you pride in your roots and encourages you to feel everybody else is picking on you, which is one of the basic pleasures of the New York experience."
Russell Baker, So This Is Depravity