Tough Love and Thin Skin

"New York, perhaps unlike any other city, has its own internationally recognisable quirks. We are the city of tough love and thick skin."
Asad Dandia, Al Jazeera

Complicated Island

Manhattan (Pixabay)

"Manhattan is probably the most complicated of islands, but that does not mean the people who live there do not try to understand the place. In fact, the greatest thing about any island is that you can get your arms around it, emotionally and  intellectually. Manhattan just takes longer arms than most."
Richard Reeves, Islands Magazine

Scandals

"Here in the Big Apple, we love our scandals. They're the oxygen we breathe. Like the spring flowers in Central Park, they bloom across the front pages of our beloved tabloids. Whether it's that mayoral candidate and his sexting, or that governor and his friend with the perfect lady parts, or our president and his second wife-to-be cheating on his first wife, or his third wife-to-be cheating on his second wife, it's a scandal and we love it. And when the scandal fades, we wilt."
Jason Bull (Michael Weatherly), Bull

Romantic City

"New York is, in my opinion, a romantic city, not in spite of its brutality and greed, but precisely because of them. Because of its brutality and its greed, its shrillness, its cult of catastrophes, its constant sacrifice of the past and the future to the present moment, its commercial organization of crime and its criminal organization of business, its contradictory climate, excessive and incontrollable; because of its eagerness to climb the sky making each year a taller building than the others and, in summary, because of its unlimitedness."
Julio Camba, La ciudad automática

Miraculous Resilience

"When I was in L.A., I was like New York is going to be like empty and sad and New York. But then I got here and it really felt like Paris in the summer. There’s all this outdoor dining and it’s gorgeous and the dogs are everywhere. New York has a resilience that is miraculous. But I’m still getting cussed out on the street and all that fun stuff."
Chloe Fineman, Variety

Infectious Energy

"There is an energy that exists in New York that I find infectious and truly unique to this city. I've noticed it from the first day I visited over 10 years ago, and it’s one of the things that enticed me to move here,"
Daniel Humm, quoted in The Points Guy

Spring Days in New York

"It was one of those bright, gladdening spring days in New York that tricks you into thinking that perhaps summer has come. I hadn't been in the city long enough not to fall for the trick (never trust the month of March in New York!), and so allowed myself to feel a burst of joy at the appearance of the sun."
Elizabeth Gilbert, City of Girls

Community Responsibility

"More so than any scenic skyscraper vista or wild night out, it’s the sight of New Yorkers quietly helping one another that defines the city for me. I don’t know if I’ll spend the rest of my life here, or uproot myself all over again in a year or two, but the compassion and community responsibility that New York engenders in so many of its residents can never really be 'over.'"
Emma Specter, Vogue

Awe and Wonder

Manhattan (Pixabay)

"I had known I would live in New York City since my earliest family excursions there as a tyke. As the family car would ascend the rise over Queens that revealed the skyline, I was filled with awe and wonder. I had to be there to know it."
Matthew Conlon, Marketwatch

The F Word

"New Yorkers aimed the F word like a Smith & Wesson into city streets and cafés, at perfect strangers, over the mildest of infractions, and the rubber bullets bounced right off."
Julia Heaberlin, Lie Still

Irish New York

St. Patrick's Day Parade (Pixabay)

"Patrick's Day in New York is second only to Christmas or Thanksgiving; how on earth did this come to be? Why are the Irish allowed to paint the streets in tricolour and dye the Hudson green? Other nationalities enjoy no such indulgence. What is it with the Irish? Is it that the first Irish immigrants hugely influenced the city's culture or is it simply the Irish knack for throwing a party?"
Damien Enright, A Place Near Heaven

The Metaphor of New York

"The metaphor of New York is “get out of my face.” That’s the metaphor of our time. New York is a fast-pulsed place and if you’re going to live here and write about it, that’s what it is. You know, on the subway, move, let’s go, come on, make your point."
David Chesky, David Chesky.com

Ship Arrival

"If it sounds glamorous to arrive in Manhattan every morning via ship, let me assure you it was not. Even my immigrant ancestors arriving at Ellis Island would have seen me on the ferry and thought, There has to be a better way."
Colin Jost, A Very Punchable Face

Romantic Feeling

"New York is a wonderful city to leave and a wonderful city to come back to. I still have that romantic feeling about it."
Garrison Keillor, New York Magazine

How to Afford to Live in New York

"No one can afford to live in New York. Yet, eight million people do. How do we do this? We don’t know. It’s a mystery to us. We don’t have a clue. We don’t know but we’re still here. So you can come here without knowing how you’re going to live here and somehow you will do enough things to live here. It’s as simple as that."
Fran Lebowitz, Pretend It's a City

Survival Template

"The country and the world looks to New York City for leadership and the template on what it takes to survive and thrive. My kinda town!" 
Billy Mitchell, Travel and Leisure Magazine

If You Can't Stand the Heat...

"New York is not for little pussies who scream
If you can't stand the heat
Then get off my street."
Madonna, I Love New York

Surreal World

"New York. What an incredible city. From the first moment we saw the iconic skyline of Manhattan with the stunning Chrysler and Empire State Buildings , we knew we were in a surreal world."
Debra Luccio, DebraLuccio.com

The Chosen City

"We regard ourselves as The Chosen City. Our sense of exceptionalism is built on the idea that we’re blessed with more talent, grit and guts than anywhere else. In your eye, al-Qaeda! Blow yourself silly, hurricanes! Today’s horrific, inconceivable body count makes it too easy to minimize these earlier disasters. But each seemed an affront to the very qualities that make New York different — our diversity, our economic and cultural primacy, our openness to the outside world. Yet each left us economically and spiritually a stronger place."
Steve Cuozzo, The New York Post

Obsessive Love

"New York love isn't brotherly. It's obsessive, it's ecstatic, it's an electric current that makes you grab your bags and uproot your life."
Whoopi Goldberg, Vogue

The Name New York

"What I love most about New York is that it’s called New York! Every day everything we come across is new. And it’s a city that doesn’t let you get on with adhering to old patterns and old ways. It’s a city filled with positivity."
Stephen Gan, Fashion Week Daily 

Freeing Feeling

"I love that after a good date or a good meeting I can walk down the street screaming with joy if I want. and no one cares. No one calls the police or grabs their kids. If anything, they smile. You see, New York is filled with crazy people, so to everyone walking by me' I'm just one more crazy. It's a very freeing feeling."
Karyn Bosnak, What's Your Number?

Corporate Sleaze

"I miss the old days. I miss the old days! I miss New York City, bankrupt. I miss the danger and I miss the creativity. Now it’s just corporate sleaze."
Patti LuPone, W Magazine