Microcosm of the World

"For me, the most inviting aspect about the city was its diversity. New York is a microcosm not just of the United States but of the world—it is a place so vast and varied that it scarcely seems to matter what group or race any individual might belong to."
Jeffrey Sterling, Unwanted Spy

Ethnic Makeup

Chinatown (Pixabay)

"Culture and politics in New York are based on premises not quite shared by the nation generally. When other Americans speak of New York as being different, something other than America, they often have in mind its size, density, big buildings, and harried lifestyles. But they seem also to have in mind a special quality of the city's culture and politics, perhaps associated with its ethnic makeup."
Thomas Bender, The Unfinished City

Nature of a New Yorker

Brooklyn Bridge (Pixabay)

"I'm a New Yorker, so it’s in my nature to, sure, sure, hope for the best but, c’mon, expect the worst."
Joanne Gruber, The Washington Post

Version of Wonderland

"Like all dyed-in-the-wool Manhattanites, I found the so-called clean-up of 42nd Street distasteful. What with the pimps, the porn movie houses, the touts for the live sex shows, the drugs, the parasites that hung around the Port Authority terminal, and all the rest of that scuzz, the old 42nd Street had been no picnic. But it was preferable to this version of Wonderland where everybody was buying inflatable Little Mermaids and queuing up for The Lion King."
Charlotte Carter, Coq au Vin

Rapid Progress

"New York is cosmopolitan, essentially so, beyond all large cities of the world. Absorbed in the whirl and stir of the To-day, occupied with vast schemes and enterprises for the To-morrow, overswept by a constant influx of new life and new elements, it seems to have no individual entity. It does not hold fast its old traditions, its past associations. It is hurried on, in the quickstep of its march of improvement, far away from its starting-point; and as it goes and grows with rapid progress into something new and vast."
Spencer Trask, Historic New York

Pet Peeve

"I really don’t like when people say, 'New York is boring now. New York isn’t like it used to be.' I hate that. It’s one of my pet peeves. No, motherfucker, you’re boring! You’re not like you used to be."
Ryan McGinley, GQ

No Place Like New York City

"The insanity, the constant frustration, the worries, and dark moments are worth it. Every now and then, you walk up out of the subway on some night of perfect weather and the buildings, the lights, the pretty, stylish girls and the boys affecting an attitude hard enough to deserve the city and the girls strikes you. The magic that exists now existed in 1993; it probably existed in 1893. It’s New York City. And there is no place like it on the face of the earth."
David Marcus, The Federalist

Pandemic in New York

Elmhurst Hospital (Wikimedia Commons)

"We are New Yorkers. We rushed the pile after 9/11, rebuilt after Sandy, walked home during the blackout, made out in Times Square on V-J Day. We’re minting a lot of heroes at Elmhurst Hospital and Mount Sinai West this week, health-care workers who have answered the call with bravery and compassion and sacrifice. The story of New York in this pandemic should belong to them."

Nathan Thornburgh, The Atlantic

Borough Attractions

"Manhattan has the Empire State Building. Bronx has Yankees Stadium, Brooklyn the Bridge, Queens has the US Open, Staten Island has a gigantic landfill."
Zach Nichols (Jeff Goldblum), Law & Order: Criminal Intent

Brooklyn

Williamsburg (Pixabay)

"Brooklyn is the world's largest small town."
Tim McLoughlin and Thomas Adcock, Brooklyn Noir 3

Island Living

"As a New Yorker, I'm someone who lives on an island and looks across to America."
Laurie Anderson, Electronic Musician

New York's History

"New York is the city that reproduces itself according to the ideals of each generation. It has no continuous line. Everything is possible because its past is only the future turned upside down. New York's history is what happened tomorrow."
Jerome Charyn, In the Shadow of King Saul

The Feel of New York

"The feel of New York is a mixture of ice-water, a corrosive acid, and human breath sweeping someway warmish against one's flesh."
Mary MacLane, A Diary of Human Days

Blessed New York

"New York knows how to seize. She knows how to struggle. She knows how to push forward. she knows how to exert herself, consciously and dynamically. Old blunders fail to plague her. Empty of fear is her heart, which ever grows into the fulfilment of her promising future. Blessed is she."
Sri Chinmoy, America the Beautiful

New York Lifestyle

"I'm not saying that you didn't go through a lot, Drew. But we all go through a lot every day. We're New Yorkers. It's our lifestyle."
Rob Bynes, The Night We Met

Bouncing Back

"We know how to grieve. We also believe in picking ourselves up and moving on. That's how we deal. This city isn't anywhere near having bounced back yet, but it will, because that's what New York City is all about."
John Strausbaugh, New York Press

Popular Imagination

Manhattan (Pixabay)

"From almost the city’s very beginnings as a Dutch trading outpost, New York has seen itself, in defiance of its place at the edge of a continent, as centre, goal and culmination – New York is, in the popular imagination, the place everywhere else aspires to be."
Jenny Hendrix, TLS

International Settlement

"New York is unique as a great metropolis in that, while it unquestionably has its own characteristic life, this life does not focus the life of the rest of the country, as London is the distillation of all English character and custom. But I had a sense this leg of my journey of returning from America and entering an international settlement."
Alistair Cooke, The American Home Front

Mitte-Feuille

"New York is like a huge, multi-layered mitte-feuille . . . golden and shiny on the top, hard and dark on the bottom."
Leo Schofield, quoted in The Bulletin

New York Family

"It’s corny, and it’s a cliché, this idea that New Yorkers are all a family. Everybody thinks New York is so fierce. And it is fiercely excellent, is what it is. New York is as neurotic as living any other place, but it’s a neurosis I understand. It’s a neurosis that’s run by excellence and merit."
Tovah Feldshuh, West Side Rag

Glamorous New York

"The glamorous thing of New York is the city itself. The size of it, the amount of people in it and the hustle and bustle of it, and the opportunity not only to meet  thousands of people, but to be lost, to be anonymous. It's a great thing."
Johnny Mercer, Johnny Mercer

Search Results

New York Memories

"New York that I miss doesn't exist anymore. Physically it's gone, plus the people—that's what really makes the memories—are now all over the place, if they're still alive. One day I just decided I would enjoy this town for what it has instead of bitching about what it hasn't."
Hubert Selby Jr, So Real It Hurts