Hum of Life

Midtown Manhattan

"Leaving the country and moving to the city may have been the start of my love of living in a place where there is a kind of pulse that one can hear and feel. One reason I love lying in bed in New York is the constant sound of taxis and the hum of life that makes my pulse race."
Peter Keogh, Filling in the Gaps

Most American of Places

Fire hydrant in Hell's Kitchen

"New York is the most American of all places. Americans think of it as the most foreign of America cities, but of course it is the place where capitalism and democracy, these two great American impulses, came bubbling out of the ground for so long, and so much of what we think of as America was born here first."
Ric Burns, CNN

Nonstop Hopefulness

Freemans Alley

"The thing I learned about living in New York before I fully understood what it meant to be a New Yorker is that things are different here than they are everywhere else. There’s this nonstop hopefulness, this weird charge that never leaves the air, like anything can happen. Like your destiny is constantly right around the corner."
Emma Lord, When You Get the Chance

Cult of New York

Marble Collegiate Church and Empire State Building

"It's like everyone born here is auto-enrolled in the cult of New York."
Wade Grey (Richard T. Jones), The Rookie

The Nicest

Brooklyn Bridge Park

"In my experience, New Yorkers are the nicest. Of course there are exceptions and I’m typically not chatting up strangers on the subway or in an alley, but the negative reputation New Yorkers receive is hardly deserved. Most people in New York are incredibly helpful, probably because many of them also moved here from somewhere else and can understand the struggle."
Tobias van Schneider, vanschneider.com

Thankful for New York

Inflating of the Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons

"I’m thankful for the randomness that is this city. You can hop from a pop-up museum for ’90s snack foods and then find the best slice of pizza for only $2.75, followed by stumbling upon a secret bar behind a hot dog shop. NYC has so many cool and eclectic spots. You can live here forever and still find new things to do."
Jonathan Hartig, Time Out New York

Pieces of a Pie

Building in Long Island City

"That's what New York is to me, small pieces of a huge pie, and everything connects together through the lens of love."
Dhonielle Clayton, Entertainment Weekly

Own Hearbeat

Third Avenue

"Hardly anybody in our class has been to New York City, so we’re all just a little wide-eyed about it. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a place so alive. It’s a city that has its own heartbeat."

Jenny Han, Always and Forever, Lara Jean

Filled with Ghosts

Ghost bike on Flatbush Avenue

"New York is stubborn. It's filled with ghosts who won't let you forget who and what came before you. No matter how it changes, New York is still where it's at. It will always be where it's at."
Jane L. Rosen, A Shoe Story

Plugging Yourself

Zuccotti Park

"You have to become very calm because New York is so hectic. Arriving in New York is like plugging yourself into electricity."
Carolina Herrera, WWD

Crazy in Love

Romeo and Juliet statue

"I love New York City. I am so crazy in love with it, so excited on the occasions when I get to return to it from my home upstate, even just for brief work-related appointments on frigid winter afternoons, that I almost can’t see straight."
Sari Botton, Never Can Say Goodbye

Magic Words

Civic Center

"The words 'New York' are charged with a magic based on the belief that anything can happen to anybody in a city that exists for everyman. New York is a bastion of accomplishment, a tabula rasa town where nobody cares what your last name is or who your husband is or what your connections are."
Michael Graham, Redneck Nation

Achieving Dreams

World Trade Center

"I think New York is one of those cities where, whatever your ambition is, you can look around and instantly see someone achieving that dream, often at a level that you never even knew was possible. That experience can be dispiriting, but also extremely inspiring."
Adrian Tomine, The New Yorker

Moving to New York

Moving in day at Columbia University

"I feel like moving to New York is a lot like having a kid. If you feel like you’re ready, you’re probably the most unequipped person. You’re not supposed to feel like you’re ready so that you take the care that it takes to make the move correctly."
Josh Johnson, Vulture

Immigrant Metropolis

"The Immigrants" monument

"Perhaps it’s because I grew up in Russia, Canada, and Australia that I’ve always felt drawn to New York, that great immigrant metropolis. Or, perhaps it’s the city’s limitless size paired with its densely packed streets, which continue to yield surprises the more one wanders; the heady sense of human industry as soon as you step foot into Penn Station; the celebrated literary and artistic pedigree. It is, to me, all the things a city would be — warts and all — if one were to distill so many of the world’s population centers down to their essence, and use the concentrate to build something anew."
Ilia Blinderman, The Pudding

Woody Allen

Woody Allen wax figure at Madame Tussauds

"New York is a hellhole. A miserable excuse for a city. A place where no one in his right mind would live. (And it’s not just because my ex-wife lives there.) The truth is, the only thing I like about New York is Woody Allen, and apparently, a lot of New Yorkers don’t like him. Go figure."
Paul Whitefield, Los Angeles Times

Part of the United States

Empire State Building

"In a single park in the Bronx, you hear ten different languages in 20 minutes. It's a very stimulating city, a small world. The only bad thing about this city is that it's part of the United States."
Valeria Luiselli, Vanguardia

Hits You in the Face

Morningside Heights

"New York is a city that hits you in the face when you walk out the door — and you better be ready for it."
Les Moonves, Smithsonian

Sense of Power

Manhattan Municipal Building

"I like New York very much. It is the capital of America. You can breathe the grandiose air. People say that if I have a negative quality, it's that I never get enough. But in New York, I get enough. The sense of power in New York—everything is going to happen better in New York."
Elio Fiorucci, quoted in I Used to Be Charming

New York Kids

Parked strollers at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens

"I think raising kids in New York is just so great, it's so special. It's like, as I got older and as I went to college and I traveled, nothing ever intimidated me growing up in New York."
Jerry O'Connell, Salon

Intellectual Energy

College Walk at Columbia University

"New York is my ideal home. It has the vigor, the intellectual energy, and the chaos I thrive on."
Bharati Mukherjee, New York Magazine

Emotional City

Riverside Park

"New York is a very emotional city. One day you can be feeling very good, feeling like you accomplished a lot, and the next day you can feel very lonely and swallowed up by it, because it’s so big. Your emotions run crazy."
Janet Jones Gretzky, NY Daily News