Achieving Goals in NYC

Riverside Park steps

"The people I knew around my age who came from outside New York generally succeeded in achieving their goals more than the people I knew who were born in New York. And I always thought that was because the people who were born in New York knew how hard New York was. But the people from outside had no idea. So there’s something to be said for that type of ignorance."
Fran Lebowitz, The Brooklyn Rail

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

Nobody is Watching

 

 

"It's an astonishment to me that every day, tens of thousands of people aren’t slaughtered on the streets of New York. I don't know why this happens. It is an amazing thing because there are millions of people. The only person looking where she is going is me. I'm the one person in the whole city who's watching I'm going."
Fran Lebowitz, Pretend It's a City

The Essence of New York

 

 

"The idea that New York is over makes some people angry, but it makes me laugh. It's such a ridiculous idea. Everything changes in New York. That’s the essence of a city. There is not a square foot of New York City that is the same as when I got here in 1970."
Fran Lebowitz, Harper's Bazaar

Ring Cycle

"Everything in New York is like the Ring Cycle. Everything in New York is an operatic thing. It’s incredible problems. So you realize that it’s just so hard to live in New York, that when people say, ‘Why do you live in New York?’ you really can’t answer them. Except you know that you have contempt for people who don’t have the guts to do it."
Fran Lebowitz, Pretend It's a City

How to Afford to Live in New York

"No one can afford to live in New York. Yet, eight million people do. How do we do this? We don’t know. It’s a mystery to us. We don’t have a clue. We don’t know but we’re still here. So you can come here without knowing how you’re going to live here and somehow you will do enough things to live here. It’s as simple as that."
Fran Lebowitz, Pretend It's a City

Designated New Yorker

"I’m not leaving. In fact, I feel that I am like the designated New Yorker. Everyone else can leave."
Fran Lebowitz, The New Yorker

Freer

"The reason I came to New York and the reason most people used to come to New York, and maybe some still do, is because it is freer than wherever we came from."
Fran Lebowitz, Five Books

New York and New Jersey

"New York City is filled with the same kind of people I left New Jersey to get away from."
Fran Lebowitz, The Fourth--and by Far the Most Recent--637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said

Clean is Not Enough

East 13th

"When you leave New York, you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough."
Fran Lebowitz, Metropolitan Life/Social Studies

Laying the Blame

James J. Walker Park

"In New York it's not whether you win or lose--it's how you lay the blame."

Fran Lebowitz, Metropolitan Life