Cruise Ship

"New York was like a giant cruise ship, one of the last remaining places where thirty-five was still considered young."
Jenny Mollen, Live Fast Die Hot

The Commonwealth of Brooklyn

Dumbo (Pixabay)

"Brooklyn was like a commonwealth, a colony of peoples, yet at the same time it served as a gateway. "
Andrew Sarris, Song of Brooklyn

Expect the Unexpected

Manhattan (Pixabay)

"New York City is a place where one can expect the unexpected. When the city shows its ugliness it is not a pretty sight, and when New York turns violent it is often brutal."
Richard Giudice, Everyone's a Suspect

Leaving Manhattan

George Washington Bridge (Pixabay)

"The thought of leaving Manhattan was like a tug in her gut, and not the pleasant, anticipatory kind. She'd grown up across the river, thinking Manhattan was the center of the universe. She'd never been the sort to get hit with wanderlust, had never had the desire to see what was over the next hill just because the hill hid the view."

Laura Anne Gilman, Blood from Stone

Inspiring Human Energy

"Real, live, inspiring human energy exists when we coagulate together in crazy places like New York City. Feeling sorry for yourself because you can’t go to the theater for a while is not the essential element of character that made New York the brilliant diamond of activity it will one day be again."

Jerry Seinfeld, The New York Times

Bad Investment

Financial District (Pixabay)

"New York will take all your money and all your kindness and all your love and will keep it for itself. There is no return on your investment."
Dana Czapnik, The Falconer

Grandiose Necklace

"New York is more beautiful than Venice!! Its glass skyscrapers seem like large waterfalls falling from the sky!! At night it's a grandiose necklace of rubies sapphires and emeralds."
Lucio Fontana, 2018 International Yearbook of Futurism Studies

Muggers and Rapists

Midtown Manhattan (Pixabay)

"New York is always exciting, but you're right, I wouldn't want to live here. I'll take the earthquakes over the muggers and rapists."
Joseph D. McNamara, The Blue Mirage

Magical Side

"New York has a magical side. Since I was a child I wanted to live here. Every moment I walk in the city I feel like I'm in a movie. The characters, the people, the art, the buildings, even the noise... There's no other city like it."

Wes Gordon, La Vanguardia

Opportunity

"What New York has is opportunity. It is a really small place with all kinds of people. You have the chance to show who you are, what you have inside, or what you want to do."
Domingo Zapata, DZapata.com

New York Arrival

"When you’re a young, privileged person arriving in New York City for the first time, it’s easy to feel as though the city was designed for you, and you alone. "
Emma Specter, Vogue

Perpetual Shift

Harlem (Pixabay)

"New York isn’t dead—it’s as vital as ever, just changing, for a while or forever, like always. Perpetual shift is the only rhythm this city knows."
Talmon Joseph Smith, The Atlantic 

New York Sunset

"You've never experienced a New York sunset until you've seen it from the deck of the Staten Island Ferry—as a seagull pukes up mouse bones onto your geometry textbook. You'll think, Are we in the Mediterranean? And a drunk ferry hand will burp, 'Naw, sweetie, that's the Hudson Bay. Where all of New York's sewers meet for breakfast!'"
Colin Jost, A Very Punchable Face

Communing with Humanity

Brooklyn Bridge (Pixabay)

"We’re not bailing. New York is where we trained for and entered our professions. It’s where we met and fell in love and married. But more than that, New York is where we made a compact to commune with the entirety of humanity, not just the people like us."
Matthew Conlon, Marketwatch

Remaining Oneself

"Once upon a time, people moved to New York to become New Yorkers. Then people moved to New York and thought it perfectly okay to remain themselves."
Darryl Pinckney, Busted in New York and Other Essays

Trainer

 

"New York is a city that challenges people and tests them to reach their potential. It’s like a trainer."
Olivia Chantecaille, Observer

Miss Liberty

Statue of Liberty (Pixabay)

"Lots of people have asked me what it was that made my stay in New York so extraordinary and unique. In fact, it is simply the promise of the big 'Miss Liberty' – the green lady with the crown on her arguably blonde hair and the torch in her hands: to be free. In New York, where so many have searched for freedom, I, too, was truly free for the first time in my life."
Lisa Krämer, New York for Blondes

Brooklyn Chill

"I wanted to live in New York. And I felt like Brooklyn is everything I’m about — chill, on the low, all-black everything, we're quiet."
Kevin Durant, The New York Daily News

Big Battery

"New York is just like a big battery, you know, it gives you such energy."
Tomi Ungerer, Publishers Weekly

Reports of Our Death

NYC (Pixabay)

"Like the mythical Phoenix that rises from the ashes, New York City will make a powerful comeback in the coming years and will once again prove to the naysayers that, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of our death are greatly exaggerated."
Tom Allon, City & State New York

Eat or Be Eaten

Midtown (Pexels)

"New York is such a city where it’s eat or be eaten, everybody kind of becomes lone rangers."
Ade Chike Torbert, The New York Times

A Day in New York

Grand Central Terminal

"A day in New York is like six months anywhere else."
Brian Meehl, Suck It Up and Die