Product of New York

Mural in Chelsea

"I carry New York with me everywhere I go. It's almost written across my forehead. I am a product of New York."
Joey Bada$$, SGB Media

New York is a Lie

South Street Seaport

"New York is a lie, I will tell you. Each city is its own lie, but New York is a whopper. I don't expect you to listen about that. Everyone needs to learn it in their own time."
Lisa Taddeo, Animal

Getting New York

Irving Place

"New York is one of my favourite places, but when I first went it wasn’t quite what I imagined. Then I think I discovered its secret, which is that there are an awful lot of very anonymous-looking brownstone buildings that seem quite drab but, when you go inside, are fantastic. It’s either a coffee shop or a restaurant or a museum. I remember being worried, thinking: 'Am I the first person that doesn't get New York?' Then suddenly it clicked and I realised, 'I love this city.' I think it's a fantastic place."
Mark Gatiss, High Life

Us and the Rest of the World

Brooklyn Bridge 

"In a New Yorker's mind, it's us and then there's the rest of the world."
Ana Maria Vives, The New Yorker Away from Home

One Taste of the Apple

JFK Airport

"All the kids decide the city with its winos and grifters and noise and dirty streets is totally horrid—gross, as kids today would put it—except for a boy who knows at once that New York is the city of his dreams and destiny; the place that will allow him to soar above and beyond the lowest common denominator. One taste of the Apple, and this boy is gloriously seduced and corrupted."
Thomas Adcock, Grief Street

New York is Everything

The Daily News Building

"New York is Europe, Asia, America. It's everything."
Vivian Maier, Vivian Maier Developed

Old Friend

"SKY" by Yoko Ono

"New York is like an old friend. It has its moods. But I know them all. "

Yoko Ono, Twitter

Love Affair

Little Italy

"In order to love New York you have to hate it too. It's like a love affair–you don't hunger for it till it's out of reach, and when you've had your fill, you need to separate. When you return, some of it is unfamiliar, but oh my God, the beauty of it."
Connie Eisenstat, New York Magazine

Illusion and Reality

Brooklyn Bridge Park

"New York is a city where illusion and reality coalesce into the viscous paste, holding larger-than-life souls together."

Brian Kannard, Steinbeck: Citizen Spy

Heaven on Earth

Financial District

"The streets of New York are the closest thing to heaven on earth. Here, you are not scurrying from one place to another as fast as your feet will carry you. You are on display. Without her outcasts, the metropolis would be a very dull place indeed. To succeed in heaven, you must avoid the shadows. If the sunny side of the street is full, walk in the road. And on no account learn the language. The more English you sound, the more likely you are to be believed."

Quentin Crisp (John Hurt), An Englishman in New York

Surprising City

Paley Park

"The allure of Everywhere Else is very attractive until he realizes that Everywhere Else can never surprise him like New York."

Grant Ginder, Let's Not Do That Again

Disappointing Niceness

East 23rd

"We went out and it's, 'Ahhhh! There's steam coming out of the streets!' We thought, 'This is nuts! This is New York!' We went up to somebody's house to ask for directions, hoping they were going to pull a gun on us, and instead they're like, 'Oh, you're not from here?! You should check out this place and that place.' Everybody was really nice. It was really disappointing."
Tim Goldsworthy, Meet Me in the Bathroom

Place to Live

West Chelsea

"New York is hardcore. If you stay there longer than two years, you’re going to get sinus infections. It’s terrible. I never thought of New York as a place to actually live, but people do. They love it, you know?"
Leslie Jones, The New York Times

Own Theater

"Every space in New York is its own theater. If the city offers absolution in anonymity, it also offers fleeting fame in the simple act of walking around."
Vivian Yee, The New York Times

Number One

Harlem

"New York is the big time. If you are No. 1 in New York, that usually means you are No. 1 in the nation."
Alec Cumming and Peter Kanze, New York City Radio

Embracing the New

The New School

"New York is a city that seems dedicated to the proposition that change is its own reward. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose may hold sway in Paris (and may explain why all those bored Parisians are scrambling to get apartments here), but New Yorkers thrive on novelty. New buildings, new restaurants, new styles, new art, new celebrities, new villains, new neighborhoods— all are embraced such fervor that the relics of past enthusiasms are hardly noticed."
Marilyn Bethany, New York Magazine

City of Immigrants

Statue of Liberty

"New York is not just a place, it's an idea. It's this idea of an all-welcoming city of immigrants where everyone can be a New Yorker."
Paul Auster, The Guardian

The Wrong Path

Under the FDR Drive

"There are so many distractions in New York, so many sideshows, it must be easy for people to drift down the wrong path even when they know the right one."

Tom Raikes (Thomas Cocquerel), The Gilded Age

New York's Liveliness

Grand Central Terminal

"Sure, New York’s all-the-time energy is a cliché, so is the whole melting pot thing, but they’re the kind of clichés that exist because they’re true. Do other cities have a lot going on? Yes! Do we care? No. As far as we’re concerned New York’s liveliness is second to none, and bragging about it is our compensation for tiny bathrooms."
Mark Fedeli, Tablet Hotels Magazine

New Times

One World Trade Center

"New York is a vertical city, under the sign of the new times. It is a catastrophe with which a too hasty destiny has overwhelmed courageous and confident people, though a beautiful and worthy catastrophe."

Le Corbusier, quoted in Paradigm Islands

Foundation of Time

East Village

"New York is a theory of a city built on the foundation of time alone. Manhattan is an hour, or a century, with the woodworm of the subways boring through it, eating it away, second by second."
Gilberto Owen, quoted in Latin American Literature at the Millennium