No City Comes Close to New York

Metropolitan Museum of Art

"There’s something mesmerizing about New York that has me returning every time. The energy, sights, rhythm — it all reminds me why I study and revere cities. Plus with so many restaurants and cultural spaces, no city comes close to New York."
Jonathan L. Wharton, CT Post

Someplace to Go

West 34th Street

"One of the wonderful things about New York is that no matter what time of day or night, there is always someplace to go."
Harold Robbins, The Adventurers

New York City Apartments

Real estate listings in the Upper West Side

"Searching for apartments in this city without access to your trust fund is impossible. I have no idea how you poors did it."
Charlie Winthrop (Tom Ainsley), How I Met Your Father

Beautiful Day

Riverside Park South

"It was really a beautiful day in New York. One that is always welcome about this time of the year. The summer was coming to a close and New Yorkers had suffered through the hot, humid days that come every year."
Peter Martin Larney, Die and You Die Alone

General Assembly

United Nations Building

"It's a very busy time in New York City 'cause the UN General Assembly is officially underway. Yeah: more than a hundred foreign leaders are in town to address the assembly, while some are just here to pick up a fiancée for 90 days. I love when the UN General Assembly is in session. There's no greater joy than watching the President of Rumania walk into the M&M store. Seriously, when else are you going to spot the President of Latvia holding one of those restaurant buzzers outside of Bubba Bubba Gump Shrimp?"

Jimmy Fallon, The Tonight Show

Keepin' It Queens

Flushing Meadows-Corona Park

"But look at me now, damn, y'all, look at me now
Whatever I do is N.Y., I'm keepin' it Queens 'cause that's my side."
Nas, One Mic, One Gun

Surviving

Medical Examiner's van in Midtown Manhattan

"Isn't that what New York is all about anyway—surviving?"
Carola Lovering, Tell Me Lies

Enchanting City

Gramercy Park

"Before I went to New York, I’d imagined it as a tough, concrete jungle full of skyscrapers. But when I arrived, I discovered the exact opposite. It had tree-lined avenues and beautiful buildings, and not just tall ones. It was completely enchanting."
Tom Conti, The Telegraph

Something Going On

West 42nd Street

"Have I mentioned that I love big cities, and New York most of all? I do. The people, the traffic, the noise, the bars, the restaurants, that indescribable and chronically over-referenced buzz. . . . I love knowing that something is always going on, right around the corner."
Gemma Burgess, Brooklyn Girls

Courage and Determination

National 9/11 Memorial

"New York is truly an extraordinary place. Those of us who have lived here, or visited, or just dreamed of it have always known that. For the rest of the world, September 11 demonstrated it. New Yorkers are extraordinary people. As people around the globe watched the events of the 11th in horror, they drew inspiration from the courage and determination of the people of this great city."
Nancy Pelosi, House Intelligence Committee Subcommittee on Terrorism Field Hearing 

Adventurous Town

Brooklyn Bridge

"New York is an adventurous town, and there are major and minor challenges all the time, which is why I love it. And because we all stick together, that is what makes it a community."
Naomi Watts, Vogue

New York Makes You Better

East 42nd Street

"New York is the city that never sleeps. It's the only place to get better at being you, in this place that doesn't rest; you're always working hard to keep up with this city, and it makes you better."
John Clay III, Playbill

Battle of the Wills

Sixth Avenue

"Walking in New York is a battle of the wills, a balance of aggression and kindness. I'm not saying it's always easy. The occasional 'Watch where you're going, bitch' can, I admit, put a crimp in one's day."
Sarah Vowell, The Partly Cloudy Patriot

New York Agenda

Harlem Meer

"Everyone had their own special New York agenda — places and restaurants and dive bars and park benches that made them think: This is why I live here. This is the reason that I pay too much rent for too small a place that I share with two roommates, a mouse, and a water bug the size of Toledo."
Jane L. Rosen, A Shoe Story

Work Harder

Subway workers in the Union Square station

"New York makes you really bust your ass to try to do what you want to do. I always feel like I'm slacking because New York constantly reminds me to work harder."
Zhen Heinemann, New York Theater Review 2007

Authentic Self

One World Trade Center

"It makes me so proud to live here, and to have made a life here. It is not easy to live in New York, but I have a chance at being my most authentic self here; we all do."
Lin-Manuel Miranda, Playbill

Ghost Town

#6 subway train

"New York is very much not dead, but it is indeed a ghost town. The city is steeped in history, and if you’ve lived here long enough, it’s probably rare you walk a few blocks and don’t reflect on which banks used to be cool bars and which buildings you used to visit your ex at and which corner—well, you get it. It’s a city of infinite possibility and stacked memories, a place where, at any time, you can be struck with a powerful reminiscence and equally as likely run into someone completely random and out of context."
Melissa Kravitz Hoeffner, Time Out New York

Talk of the Town

News vans in Turtle Bay

"New York City. Who doesn't want to become the talk of the town here? I mean, make a name for yourself in this city and it can feel like the most sparkling place on Earth, full of fireworks and excitement."
Charles-Haden Savage (Steve Martin), Only Murders in the Building

There's Something About New York

Pete's Tavern

"I tell you, New York is comfortable—comfortable. There's something about it—the sights and the crowds, and the way it changes every day, and the very air of it that seems to tie a one-mile-long stake rope around a man's neck, with the other end fastened somewhere about Thirty-fourth Street. I don't know what it is."
O. Henry, The New York Stories of O. Henry

Distinctive Quality of New York

Split-Rocker, by Jeff Koons, at Rockefeller Center

"When I think about what's really the definitive aspect of New York, is that it's a place that really rallies a generation to come together. The youth sits down and discusses their ideas, and after a lot of talking they realize what they would like to do in the world and they take action and start to define their vision. And at that moment there's a new generation coming in right underneath them going through the same process of becoming and defining their ideas and what's important to them. This is the distinctive quality of New York for me."
Jeff Koons, Vice 

Red City

Third Avenue

"New York is a red city—the color of blood and life. Everything in it arouses both enthusiasm and disgust; it reflects God and the Devil."
Le Corbusier, quoted in The New Yorker Book of the 40s

Only New Yorkers

110th Street subway station

"The New York City subway is confusing; the map looks like a diagram of the human central nervous system. Only New Yorkers know how to get around without getting lost."
JJ Bola, The Selfless Act of Breathing

Ground Level

Sixth Avenue

"If New York was just tall buildings and canyons of glass it would be a boring place – however great the architecture. It's always been what happens at ground level that made the Apple so big."
Jonathan Jones, The Guardian

Branding

Long Island City

"New York is probably the world's greatest branded city. The brand key is integration and direction. That is driven by a combination of single-minded leadership about what New York is: an eclectic mixture of people, all of whom, regardless of sex, age or creed, have the potential to realise their dream - if they work at it."
Jonathan Gabay, Biz Community

Ne Plus Ultra

Riverside Park

"Summer in New York is the ne plus ultra. It's dreadfully hot, so steamy you can practically see the lines of heat shimmering off the sidewalk in waves."

Micol Ostow, The Day Before

New Yorker by Nature

125th Street subway station

"I would absolutely identify as a New Yorker by nature. I grew up in Detroit. There was not a bone in my body that even considered staying in Detroit for the rest of my life. As for New York: I love public transportation, I love street performers, I love the melting-pot aspect of the city."
Kristen Bell, Interview Magazine

Battle of the Busiest

Times Square Recruiting Station

"The thing about New York is it's kind of like the battle of the busiest. It's like, 'Oh, you're so busy. No, I'm so busy.' It's kind of a competition."
"Pauline," quoted in Digital Nomads

Everybody is Welcome

"This is New York City. Everybody is welcome."
Jamie Reagan (Will Estes), Blue Bloods

Movers and Shakers

Al Roker wax figure at Madame Tussauds

"When I was in college up in Syracuse, I could only imagine that I'd live in Manhattan someday. The act of moving from the outer boroughs to the island of Manhattan was for movers and shakers, the ambitious—those who finally got a piece of the pie à la George Jefferson."
Al Roker, You Look so Much Better in Person

Arbiter

Tiffany Window

"New York is the arbiter. What New York accepts is accepted. What New York dislikes is disliked. If New York has put its seal of approval on a book, or a play, or a painting, that book, that play, that painting  is accepted. If New York has put its approval upon a musician, or an actor, or a preacher, he is accepted by the rest of the continent."
Konrad Becovici, Around the World in New York

Racket

Columbus Circle

"New York is a racket of sirens, cars, horns and people. It's a lot of fun, it's edgy and exciting, and now it's home."
Fiona Graham, The Chancer 

Better Life

Ellis Island

"The American Dream isn't a vision of white utopia where everyone has a yard and 'freedom' and barbecues on the weekends. The American Dream is people streaming in from all over the world for hundreds of years onto this one tiny island because they wanted to make a better life for themselves and their kids and their families back home."
Andrea Skowronek, Gothamist

Imagining What's Possible

Strawberry Fields

"I love that New York is always changing. I kind of love that you don't know what to expect around a familiar corner. That kind of energy I think, you know, keeps you on your toes, keeps you imagining or thinking about what will be and what's possible."
Christy Turlington, Vanity Fair

Inspiring Place

Literary Walk

"New York is definitely an inspiring place. I remember moving over there still to this day, and it’s a melting pot of everything and anything, and there’s so much life. I’m sure for any tourist that has been there they know that just walking around in a day. You’re just exhausted, there’s so much to take in, so much going on and when you live in New York, that’s just a normal thing, and I think along with that it’s just a melting bowl of culture and the American way of 'anything is possible,' and we all are individuals and you’re different and independent and your way of thinking – that whole independent and be-yourself type of attitude is very alive, and I think it’s a very inspiring city. It reminds you that anything is possible.
David Boyd, People Magazine

Concerned with Finance

JP Morgan Chase headquarters

"New York is more concerned with finance than anything else. It doesn’t create culture, only consumes it; most of what you find in New York comes from elsewhere."
Werner Hergoz, LAist

Exciting City

Tom's Restaurant

"New York is such an exciting city that even being on a model of it 3,000 miles away is exciting. I work with all ex-New Yorkers. That's how we survive. We have a little New York aquarium that we live in."
Jerry Seinfeld, New York Magazine

Infinite Resources

Morgan Library & Museum

"Like it or not, New York is the perfect city. It is perfect by construction, as one says in geometry. New York is what people do when they are given infinite resources, infinite space, and infinite money."
Jacques Vallee, Forbidden Science

Photogenic

Long Island City

"One thing about New York is that it’s very photogenic, but I always feel that it works better on the scale of the skyline, rather than walking among those tall giants, which have no human-scale reference."
Umberto Bellardi Ricci, Studio Fenice

Great World

Columbus Circle Globe

"New York is a world in itself — a great world, at that and daily growing greater."
Robert Hatton, Life of General Robert Hatton

Scaffolding

Building in downtown Manhattan

"The scaffolding is everywhere. I think New York would fall down without it."
Jon Reiner, The Man Who Couldn't Eat

Different New York

Midtown Manhattan

"The city will withstand -- as it always has -- but the city you left behind, you left for good. The city won't miss you because you were merely a spec in its being and when you go back (and you will since the city is always calling) you'll go back to a different New York. The city never stops and already, only a few months later, you know it's changed: that's its nature."
Laura Steiner, Huff Post

Dating in New York

Dumbo

"I really liked dating in New York because you had to walk everywhere and you had to get to know each other on the walk, not just sitting in a restaurant. Also, New York is awesome because you can always go find something weird."
Aubrey Plaza, Huff Post

Godforsaken and Great

Riverside Park South

"Every now and then New York is lonely.  It’s a grid of routine. The summers are sweaty and disgusting; the winters are cold and miserable. Sometimes, it seems as if you’re suffering from Cotard Syndrome on a hungover walk to work.  In those moments, you may refer to this godforsaken city with scorn.  But, damn it, if this town isn’t great."

James Crowley, Atwood Magazine

Growing Up in New York

Alice in Wonderland statue

"It’s a really tough city to have grown up in. I feel like the thickness of my skin is definitely a result of having lived in New York, and it’s not something I realized until you leave, and you realize that you have this armor on you being from New York. It’s very interesting because being an artist is about disarming yourself and being vulnerable and New York is kind of like 'Nah–work harder.'"
Skela, Brooklyn Magazine

New York Crowds

Times Square

"The rhythm in New York is different to that in Paris, Singapore, Tokyo or Rome. Rome is hectic, whereas the crowds in New York are moving forward like a torrent of lava."
Heinz Paetzold, Senses and the City

Real New Yorker

Lower East Side

"That's how I know you're a real New Yorker. You don't swim or drive."
Anonymous, quoted in Overheard in New York

Manhattan in July

Bryant Park

"It is a beautiful evening at the end of another blistering summer day. Everything, the people, the buildings, the trees even, are visibly relieved that it is over, and there is always a huge collective sigh of relief, a lazy groan that comes with dusk over Manhattan in July."
Rupert Everett, Vanished Years

Refuge from Oppression

Falun Dafa in Madison Square Park

"New York isn’t a city of God, but a city of liberty. That statue in our harbor isn’t holding a cross, after all. It’s flourished through the ages because it’s a place where everyone is welcome, whatever their beliefs. It’s thrived because it’s a place where everyone is free to pursue the good life in whatever form they find it. New York at its best moments has been a beacon and a refuge for people fleeing oppression. That includes the religious kind."
Adam Lee, Only Sy Media

Fallen from Grace

Peace Fountain and Cathedral of St. John the Divine

"I used to think that New York City
Fell from grace with God
And innocence abroad
Waged a war for the underdog
When the snow falls
And Central Park looks like a Christmas card
I just looked beyond the bagman
And the madness that makes this city hard."
Bernie Taupin, Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters (Part 2)

New York is Like a Jewel

Diamond District

"Sometimes less is more, and in the case of Manhattan, the key to its value is its size. New York is like a jewel in and of itself. It would seem the scarcity effect is effective whether your commodity is carats of diamond or acres of bedrock."
Aja Raden, Stoned