Loud and Fast

"New York, on the other hand, is loud and fast. There are apparently no walls in between the cheap apartments in Jessica's building. Tenants sneeze, use the bathrooms constantly, and argue. Horns honk without stopping and when someone speaks on one end of Manhattan you can hear them plainly on the other side of the island. It is one noisy-ass city."
Kris Radish, The Sunday List of Dreams

Vision Rising Out of the Sea

"To me New York is a vision that rises out of the sea as I come up the harbor on my Atlantic liner, and which glimmers for a while in the sun for the first of my stay amidst its pinnacles; but which vanishes, but for fragmentary glimpses, as I become one of the grey creatures that crawl about like ants, at the bottom of its gloomy caverns."
Alvin Langdon Coburn, quoted in Beyond the Architect's Eye

Ownership in Manhattan

"I don't want to be here, Paul. I want to be in Manhattan, where you don't own land: you own cubic feet fifty stories above the ground, like a normal person."
Jamie Buchman (Helen Hunt), Mad About You

Seclusion in New York

"One man talked to me who knew Garbo, who lived then in New York in seclusion; I don't blame her – anyway, everyone lives in seclusion in New York."
Nico, Nico: The Life and Lies of an Icon

Small Talk With Strangers

"I'm from New York. I don’t need to engage in cordial small talk with strangers. In New York, we greet newcomers by giving them incorrect directions to Times Square and criticizing the way they spread their cream cheese."
Susanna Wolff, The New Yorker

Hide Out

"New York is a great place to hide out. No one notices no one."
E.L. Konigsburg, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

Ruler of the Modern World

"New York is overpowering. I would never have believed that any impression could have had the power to so disorient me. I am staggered by the monstrous impact of this city. By contrast London is almost provincial. Here is the modern Rome, the colossal world capital, the city that has the appearance of being the center and the ruler of the modern world."
Harry Kessler, The Red Count

New York View

"I look out on that view. The water, the bridge, the lights. Manhattan on the water, shimmering like a promise. I think about how much life the city holds, how much heartbreak, how much love."
Rebecca Serle, In Five Years

Femme Fatale

Central Park (Pixabay)

"New York. Like a femme fatale, it is irresistibly compelling."
Amanda Foreman, The Guardian

Bright New York

"In the great darkness of bright Manhattan and Brooklyn, there is a rhythm. It catches your heartbeat, it captures the cacophony of the subway trains; it brings all the myriad phenomena into a steady thrum hum that becomes you."
David Marcus, The Federalist

Most Authentic Version

"New York is my home in many ways. It will always house my dreams. Some of the most important moments in my life have happened somewhere in the depths of Manhattan, and it will always be the place I feel like the most authentic version of myself."
Alison Malee, Read Poetry

Human Beings

"It is immensely ungentle, New York: immensely human: immensely intriguing to all one's selves. It is too big to have prejudices and traditions of locality: so it leaves its dwellers free, by ones and multitudes, to be human beings."
Mary MacLane, I, Mary MacLane

Coronavirus in New York City

"I really hope it doesn't happen, but can you imagine if they had to lock down New York City too? Who would New Yorkers take out their anger on if we didn't have visiting tourists? There would be no one standing inexplicably at the top of an escalator holding a map and looking confused, nobody stopping you on Seventh Avenue to ask you how to get to Eighth Avenue, Times Square would just be Elmo and Buzz Lightyear taking pictures with each other."
Seth Meyers, Late Night with Seth Meyers

Potemkin Village

"Impermanence is the great irony and, of all New York's contradictions, perhaps the biggest. What seems to be creative energy is often just feverish activity inside a ballooning bubble. New York is like a Potemkin Village, its inhabitants mere imports for the day."
Amanda Foreman, The Guardian

Taxi or Ambulance

"You know what I love about this town? You could throw a stick up in the air and it will come down on a taxi or an ambulance."
Nick Mann (Clancy Brown), Blue Steel

Fascinating City

"New York is a fascinating city. I think it's a very inspiring city, but it's overpowering when you get older. It tires me now. But it's wonderful for young people, very inspiring, and full of surprises and full of ideas."
Max von Sydow, Reuters

Unlivable

"New York is unlivable, she thought, and everyplace else is worse."
Olivia Goldsmith, Fashionably Late

Friendliest People

"I think New Yorkers are some of the friendliest people in the world, but it just comes out in a different way, in a way where they're swearing at you."
Ellie Kemper, The New York Post

New York Manners

Junction Bouleverard (Wikimedia Commons)

"Life is more easy-going in the south. People still have manners. We greet each other in the street. That was, for me, the most difficult here in New York. You enter an elevator and say a friendly good morning. New Yorkers look at you as if you are a freak.”
"Ozzy," quoted in Tunnel People

Financial Edge

"New York is like that. Everyone here except the Wall Street, one-percenter crowd is living on a financial edge where close to nothing is left over."
Holly Peterson, The Idea of Him

Jaywalking

"I'm a New Yorker, and I jaywalk with the best of them."
Sonia Sotomayor, My Beloved World

Almost Great

"Everywhere I walked there was something beautiful to see, buildings and bookstores, and museums. The sun set down a long street, glowing behind the snow clouds, and the river glistened at the end of the street, and I thought, I could just just stay here forever. New York would be great, if it weren't for all the assholes that live in it."
Alex DiFrancesco, All City