City of Contrasts

Williamsburg

"New York is truly an urban giant, a city of contrasts, at once beautiful and ugly, a city of wealth and poverty."
David Abramovich, A Soldier's Life

Friendly New Yorkers

"Central Perk" (2014)

"People in New York are friendlier than the rest of the world warned me they would be. When I tell Rachel this, she says, 'Most people here aren't assholes. They're just busy.'"
Emily Henry, People We Meet on Vacation

Plugged into the Matrix

Worker on Fifth Avenue

"New York is a good place to get things done. Because you’re just doing your thing. In California, you’re like, 'Let’s go on a hike; let’s eat beautiful food.' In New York, you’re just plugged into the matrix."
Emma Cline, BarnesandNoble.com

Going Up and Up

Park Avenue Buildings

"A city on an island, teeming with cash and ego, has nowhere to go but up. And up. And up. Imagine the Manhattan skyline in a time-lapse filmstrip, starting around 1890 — when the New York World Building crested above the 284-foot spire of Trinity Church — and culminating in the present day: it is a series of continual skyward propulsions, each new proud round overshadowing the last."
Michael Kimmelman, New York Times Magazine

Greatest Place in the Universe

Lower Manhattan seen from the Staten Island Ferry

"I know not everyone thinks New York is the greatest place but I do. I think New York City is the greatest place in the entire universe. I love it and I miss it." Casey Neistat, Twitter

Eat You Alive

Chelsea Market

"You shouldn't come here when you're totally green. You should have an idea of what you're doing or New York will eat you alive."
Champian Fulton, How to Make It in the Music Business

World Influences

Columbus Park

"That’s why I love New York. There are so many people here that are from so many different places and it’s very inspiring. I am definitely a citizen of the world and I feel most at home when I have such influences around me. To me, New York is the capital of the world."
Joel Kinnaman, The Last Magazine

Infectious Energy

Midtown Manhattan

"To those who say New York is not the same, my response is, ‘When has New York ever been the same?’ I’m still mourning the closing of Maxwell’s Plum. There’s this infectious energy in the city that’s unmatched."

Simone Levinson, quoted in Forbes Magazine

Number One

One World Trade Center

"Nearly everyone says New York is their number one city in the world, don’t they? It certainly is mine."

Cillian Murphy, BBC

Greatest Place on Earth

Long Island City

"New York is the greatest place on Earth to live, love, eat, laugh, cry, heal, and yes, to kibitz. Those of you who have never experienced it or just go with the stereotypes that you've been fed, I feel for you. This is truly the greatest city in the world. I could probably write an encyclopedia on the many things I love about it, but if I have to explain it, you won't understand it."
Russell Andresen, Memoirs of a Jewish Vampire

Best and Worst

Sign in Downtown Manhattan

"The best thing about New York is everything you can do here. The worst is everything you can't do here."
Jason Epstein, New York Magazine

Blinders

Central Park South

"I love New York. But loving it comes with an important admission. No, not about the skyrocketing, dystopian cost (that’s a separate conversation). It is that when you live a life there, and particularly when you let the city itself define you, then you sometimes don’t realize the ways it changes you for the worse. The ways it curls up into your body and grabs hold of your bones, not in a way that it helps settle you, but in a way that confines you. The way it puts blinders on you. The way it makes you stop seeing other places as relevant, let alone something that could compare. Because when you are 'the best,' then how could anything ever compare?" Michael Symonds, Patreon 

New York is Fragile

Secret Garden Fountain

"I love New York and I know it better than I know any other place. I think 9/11 demonstrated that New York is fragile, which is not an adjective that comes to mind when you walk the streets."
Michael Cunningham, How to Read a Novelist

Activity and Characters

Literary Walk

"New York is just always bustling with activity and characters. You literally can’t walk out your door without seeing something brazen or bizarre."
Flora Collins, New York Social Diary

Never Saw It Coming

NYPD car on Gramercy Park

"One thing is certain in this town: just when it's all starting to feel the same, that's when you get hit by something you never saw coming."
Martin Short, Only Murders in the Building

Leaving New York

Metro-North train above East Harlem

"I didn’t experience leaving New York City so much as a failure of character as an acknowledgment that in spite of its reputation, I didn't have to love this city. I didn't have to want to stay. For me it was part of growing up, of deciding to seek what I really wanted and who I really was rather than pursuing an idea of myself. I love New York City, but I don't want to live there. It was living there that taught me that."
Cheryl Strayed, The Atlantic

Pacemaker

Sidewalk in downtown Manhattan

"It was hard not to dream big in New York. The pulse of the city felt like a pacemaker pumping the old Esme's blood through her atrophied heart."
Jane L. Rosen, A Shoe Story

Say Anything

Chelsea

"You can say anything in New York. It's just that nobody listens, or gives a damn. Conversation here is like the traffic. After a while you don't hear it."
Stephen Solomita, Monkey in the Middle

Center of the Universe

Midtown Manhattan

"New York is a very difficult place to live for lots of boring, practical, workaday reasons, but it makes up for all those pain-in-the-ass issues with the occasional transcendent moments where you feel like you’re at the center of the universe."

Tom Breihan, Stereogum News

Realize Your Dreams or Get Out of The Way

Downtown Manhattan subway station

"That's what New York is supposed to do—it's supposed to be a place where you go face your dreams and try to execute them and either realize them or fail and then get the hell out of the way for the next bunch of kids coming in. That's what I really love about New York. To me, that's the New York we can all share."
John Popper, Suck and Blow

Small Town

Washington Mews

"The truth about living in New York is that a block is a small town and you may know nothing at all about what is happening just a few 'towns' over."
Karol Markowicz, The New York Post

Pride of Living in New York

The Paterno apartment building

"NYC is an incredible place, like no other. It’s truly fascinating, no matter where you come from or what you are looking for. It’s worth at least one visit and it will change you forever. I get that, the pride of living in NYC or visiting NYC. I get it. It’s a magical city."
Iulia Vasile, Julia Something