Busload of People

Casey Stengel Depot

"New York is such a romantic place in the sense that anything can happen at any moment. But there’s also a specialness about New York. New York is like: 'Bitch, I don’t need you. If you don’t like it here, you can leave. I’ll be fine. There’s another busload of people coming in.'"
Phoebe Robinson, The Washington Post

City of Dazzling Wealth

Lower Manhattan

"In the shadow of those grey and white pinnacles had grown up a modern Baghdad where the ends of the earth came together. A greater Italian city than Rome, a greater Irish city than Dublin, a greater German city than Cologne;  a city of dazzling wealth whose towers had once looked like peaks of solid gold to hungry eyes reaching beyond the horizons of the old world; a place that had sprung up from a lonely frontier to a metropolis, a central city, bowing to no other. A place where civilisation and savagery had climbed alternately on each other's shoulders, and reached their crest together."
Leslie Charteris, The Saint of New York

Most Beautiful Thing

Times Square

"The first thing that people photograph or digest in New York is Broadway and Times Square–it's the most beautiful thing in New York, and in America."
William Klein, Aperture

Constant Regeneration

Rose Hill

"I love New York! I love the energy of this city, the way it constantly regenerates. To always be alive, to know how to be optimistic. To understand novelty."  Sylvia Jorif, Condé Nast

Big Celebration

East 18th Street

"Hey New York is my sanctuary
Where the bankers are actors
And the waiters all are stars
It's a big celebration
Oooh yeah."
Anne Heaton, Hey New York

Possibility City

Harlem

"My own favorite thing about New York: It is possibility city. Nowhere else do you have as much of a sense when you get up in the morning that your life could be completely different by evening, merely according to whether you turn right or left when you get to a particular street corner."
Jay Molivesher, New York Magazine

Values of a Time

Greenwich Village

"New York, and in particular Brooklyn, is undoubtedly where the creativity of the inhabitants suggests new ways of speaking, dressing, and behaving. After a few years, these ways of presenting, discovered in New York, are assimilated around the world and used as fashions, unfortunately also with a certain superficiality. New York is the place that best captures the values of a time."
Gaetano Pesce, L'Officiel USA

Where People Come to Make It

The Pierre, 520 Park Avenue and the Sherry-Netherland

"I've always had a real fascination and attraction to New York. I think New York is a city where people come to make it.''
Darren Star, The Roanoke Times

A Slum

Williamsburg

"Unless you're rich, New York is like a slum. It's like India."
Jennifer Miller and ‎Jason Feifer, Mr. Nice Guy

Forced to Interact

168th Street subway station

"New Yorkers nurture so many industries — finance, trade, and tech — and have so many influences, and come from so many cultural backgrounds. And because we’re forced to be together and interact physically in our daily lives, my life feels more vital. We take the subway with lawyers, homeless people punching each other, nurses falling asleep on their way home, teachers scolding their students, and many other people from every walk of life."
Ethan Hawke, Variety

My Valentine

Pier A

"Moscow is Red, Pittsburgh is gritty. 
I know a nicer kind of city. 
It's on the Hudson, not the Rhine. 
Manhattan, be my valentine."
Phyllis McGinley, Valentine for New York

Interest in New York City

Sign in the Civic Center

"Almost everyone has heard of New York and almost everyone has an interest in New York. Even people who hate New York have an interest in New York—or else why would they bother to hate it?"
Fran Lebowitz, Time Out New York

Battery

"Sea of Light" exhibit on the South Street Seaport

"New York is a battery, it gives you energy from I don't-know-where. To me, it's magical."
Luis Guillermo Martínez, La Cuarta

Don't Blame New York

Bowery

"Don’t blame New York for your dreams that died
Don’t blame New York when you’re too tired to try
Don’t blame New York for how much you eat
Don’t blame New York when you cry in the street
Don’t blame New York for the places you grieve
Don’t blame New York if you need to leave."
Jim Andralis, Don't Blame New York

No Prejudice

Downtown Manhattan

"New York is a melting pot. In my neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, the kids were black, Hispanic, Irish, Italian, Greek and Jewish, and there was no prejudice. They all beat me up on the way to school."
Richard Belzer, quoted in The New York Times

Leaving New York City

Riverside Park

"Who doesn’t think about leaving New York City at least once a day? It’s like the house in Poltergeist: the house wants you to leave, but you keep fighting it. Living in New York is great, but it's awful too."
Jason Diamond, Never Can Say Goodbye

American Dream

Times Square

"The heart of New York is grit and resilience. New York is truly a city of dreams and a city of immigrants. It embodies the American dream."
Nicola Mendelsohn, Time Out New York

Map of New York

Lexington Avenue

"Everyone had a fragile web of friends on the map of New York – friendships that had nothing to do with geography, neighborhood. Everyone in his way excluded the masses, the unknown, the potential enemy."
Patricia Highsmith, A Dog's Ransom

Not for the Pure of Soul

Lower East Side

"New York is not for the pure of soul, the sweet of spirit, the model of sanity or the paragon of civility. It is the city that gave part of its name to the Bronx cheer and cherishes its Brooklyn Bridge as a symbol of the art of bilking the innocent."
Russell Baker, The New York Times

Everyone is Weird

Times Square subway station

"Whatever, it's New York. Everyone's weird."
Ashley Poston, Geekerella