New York Personality

"The New York personality. The cynical, opinionated, brutal, loud… You’d think it was gone. No. That’s the only immigrants that make it here, if you’ll notice, are the ones that have all those qualities. They’re not, 'Hey, tired, poor.' They got a shit attitude. That’s how you make it."

Colin Quinn, The New York Story

Experience of New York

"Everybody’s experience of New York is an amalgamation of the eras of New York that they loved the most, whether they were there or not, and usually when they were not there."
Rostam Batmanglij, Vogue Magazine

Over-Everything

"I returned to a New York brownstone on a dusty, dirty street with grim, angry people fighting for parking spaces—and I love it. New York is ugly; it's over-programmed, over-crowded, over-neurotic and over-skilled, but it's where I think I can do my best work."
Maria Tallchief, quoted in The City

I Love New York

"There isn't another like it.

No matter where you go.
And nobody can compare it.
It's win and place and show.
New York is special.
New York is diff'rent' cause there's no place else
on earth quite like New York and that's why
I Love New York."
Steve Karmen, I Love New York

Isolated Pockets

"I remember somebody telling me before I moved here that there were so many neighborhoods and so many people live in a neighborhood and never really leave it. That was basically my experience when I lived in Morningside Heights. There’d be times when I would have to go somewhere else — I’d have a birthday party and have to go to SoHo, or something — and I’d go on the subway and have no idea where I was or how it connected to anything. Even six or seven years later, I’d be walking and think, Oh, this is where that happened! They’d be all of these isolated pockets where, at the time, I had no idea how they happened."
Kristopher Jansma, Electric Literature

Social Experiment

"New York is a great social experiment with so many different people coming together to live in one place at one time, in relative equanimity."
Robert Abrams, The Luckiest Guy in the World

George Gershwin

"In Manhattan, things, people and activities are stacked one on top of another in a way that is very different from the sanitised twenty-first-century skyscraper metropolis. The skyline is as raucous as George Gershwin; tumultuous rather than orderred; random and experimental, not planned."
Ben Wilson, Metropolis

Resentment

"I’ve been trying to leave New York for 10 fucking years. I always end up coming back. It changes so often, and the people have become so wack. It’s like I have a resentment. I have a grudge that the places I grew up with have all closed."

Julia Fox, Document

The Center of the Action

"Us New Yorkers have a complicated relationship with the place we call home. There's this joke we tell each other:  'I love New York—can't wait till they finish it!' There's always construction happening everywhere. Scaffolding that you have to walk around. Jackhammers you have to shout over. Smoke plumes rising out of manhole covers for no apparent reason. You can't live here unless you love being at the center of the action, but at the center of the action, it's usually loud and crowded and it smells like pee and pot.
Elvis Duran, Where Do I Begin?

Connection and Humanity

"What I love about New York is that on every single street corner, on the subway, the cab driver that you meet, the concierge at the hotel that you’re staying at, everybody has something interesting about them. That’s across the board but in New York because there’s so many people and everybody comes from all over the world to make a life for themselves there. It really brings out a really special energy of connection and humanity."
Alison Hall,  Winnipeg Free Press

The Stuff of Dreams

Photo: Pexels

"It serves as a backdrop for classic films and some of your favorite series, it is cosmopolitan and it never sleeps: New York is the stuff of dreams!"
FrenchBee

Choir Conducted by the Devil

"New York sounds like a choir conducted by the devil. And that's on a good day."
Dana Czapnik, The Falconer

Grit and Perseverance

"Living in New York City is not for the faint of heart. I have a deep respect and appreciation for the people who live and work in the Big Apple. They have grit and perseverance to keep going amid the chaos. "
Jessi Stone, Smoky Mountain News

Meant to Be

Central Park (Pixabay)

"I have never been in love with a person, but when I am asked to explain my relationship with New York City, I often find myself relying on the language of romance. 'It just feels like it’s meant to be,'  I’ll say, starry-eyed."
Marshall Bright, Refinery29

Adrenaline Rush

"Everyone says that New York gives you an adrenaline rush like no other city — and they are right. I lived here for three years in the 1980s. Even though I was mugged, twice, and lived with a family of cockroaches in the then unfashionable borough of Queens I loved it. Still do."
Mark Palmer, The Daily Mail

Feeling Small, Living Big

"We met so many people by chance from around the world. One young Argentinian couple traded impromptu photo sessions with photos as couples at Madison Square Garden. The couple in front of me at the subway ticket machine was conversing in French while the token machine fluently guided people of many languages on the screen. New York makes you feel small but live very big."
Lindon Dodd, News and Triune

Something's About to Happen

"I like it when it snows. The city gets real quiet. Everything goes still, all the noise stops. It feels like something's about to happen."
Eugene Hunt (Ron Silver), Blue Steel

City of God

"New York, New York, nigga, never went nowhere
I just took off a couple of years
But now I'm back on my day-to-day
Old school, Gucci frames like day to day
Who gon' tell New York "Time's up"? Flavor Flav?
Cause as much as things change it remains the same
And you can give me the city of God
And Mecca, the temple, the mosque."
DJ Khaled, New York

Freaky New Yorkers

"'You know what I like about New York?' the Gasman said, noisily chewing his kosher hot dog. 'It's full of New Yorkers who are freakier than we are.'"
James Patterson, Maximum Ride

You Can't Quit New York

"New York is this horrible place in a way, but once you like it, you can’t quit it."
Matthew Broderick, Vulture

Humanity on a Massive Scale

"New York is humanity on a massive scale, and its loudest critics are usually those who can’t find in themselves the humanity it takes to live here."
Mark Fedeli, Tablet Hotels Magazine