Public and Private

The High Line (Pixabay)

"Public and private space and time are not separated the way they are in most cities. New York blurs the boundaries between them in the subway, in parks, in restaurants, in the streets, and even through the walls of the apartments."
Kenneth T. Jackson and David S. Dunbar, Empire City

Inward and Outward

Pixabay

"Unlike most cities on navigable water, New York faces inward toward Central Park and the mainland as much as it faces outward to the harbor and the rest of the world. This simultaneous facing inward and outward is true of its citizens as well."
Kenneth T. Jackson and David S. Dunbar, Empire City

Gotham

Metropolitan Opera House (Photo: Paul Masck / Wikimedia Commons)

"Gotham is a verbal city; people are always talking. And they do not make the usual separations between public and private conversation. Intermission at the Metropolitan Opera seems to be almost designed to reveal scores of individuals' relationship with their therapist."
Kenneth T. Jackson, David S. Dunbar, Empire City

Can't Stop

La Guardia Airport

"New York just can't stop. It's like flying — the city is sustained by the thrust of its forward momentum and by its speed. When the law of gravity changes, New York will stop progressing."
Fiorello La Guardia, Empire City

Talk the Talk and Walk the Walk

"The term New Yorker is as much a verb as a noun. Unlike most places that demand a certain elapsed time period before one is considered a native, New York is democratic. If you can talk the talk and walk the walk, you are a New Yorker."
Kenneth T. Jackson and David Dunbar, Empire City

Own Meaning

Strand Book Store

"Each man reads his own meaning into New York."
Meyer Berger, The Empire City

On the Verge of Greatness and Disaster

Tobacco Warehouse and Brooklyn Bridge

"New York was always on the verge of greatness, always at the edge of disaster, and only booster will could turn the balance."
David M. Scobey, Empire City

Greatest Show on Earth

Broadway

"Loved or hated, soul-destroying or life-giving, New York City concededly adds up to the greatest show on earth."
Alexander Klein, Empire City

Purgatory

Times Square

"There are some who would say with passion that the only real advantage of living in New York is that all its residents ascend to heaven directly after their deaths, having served their full term in purgatory right on Manhattan island."
Alexander Klein, Empire City

Sensory Overload

Seventh Avenue

"New York is such a sensory overload that the only way to survive is to block out some of the input, to become inured -- to develop that famous New York shell and pretend that life here is normal."
Jay McInerney, quoted in Empire City: New York Through the Centuries