Capital of the World

United Nations Way

"For all its problems, it’s still the capital of the world. You can’t get away from it. You can’t get tougher and smarter and richer and glossier than you can here. It isn’t going to happen in Poughkeepsie."
Cindy Adams, The Guardian

Incognito

Wax figures of the Prince and Princess of Wales at Madame Tussauds

"Prince William told me he had never been to New York before which, I must say, surprised me greatly.  I was even more surprised that the Duchess hasn’t been. I urged them to come back again incognito. New York is the type of city that turns a blind eye and would allow you to do that."
Patrick Stewart, quoted in The Guardian

New York Windows

Riverside South

"New York is a city full of windows, looking out and looking in. A shifting play of rectangles, the city is made up of boxes upon boxes. People live in them, breathe in them, glide up them, sleep in them."
Katy Hessel, The Guardian

Unlikely Encounters

Number 7 train

"It’s such a layer cake of different people constantly crossing paths. It’s not like other kinds of cities where people drive a lot; New York is so compact that we see each other in the subway, on the bus or on the street all the time, and are always having encounters with unlikely people."
Rebecca Miller, The Guardian

Different Walks of Life

West 34th Street

"One of the reasons we live in New York is because, without having to explain things to the girls, they can walk around the streets and just by looking around them see that the world is composed of all different people from different walks of life, different languages and different socio-economic backgrounds. They pick it up through osmosis."
Matt Damon, The Guardian

New York Stories

14th Street subway station

"The thing that always attracted me to New York was the sense of being in a place where a lot of people had a lot of stories not unlike mine. Everybody comes from somewhere else. Everyone's got a Polish grandmother, some kind of metamorphosis in their family circumstances. That's a very big thing - the experience of not living where you started. It changes you in all kinds of ways."
Salman Rushdie, The Guardian

City of Immigrants

Statue of Liberty

"New York is not just a place, it's an idea. It's this idea of an all-welcoming city of immigrants where everyone can be a New Yorker."
Paul Auster, The Guardian

In Search of Excitement

"I still love New York City, but that’s changed tremendously. I didn’t come to New York because it was clean, I came because it was exciting."
Chris Noth, The Guardian

Encounters with Strangers

"One of the great things about living in New York is that you meet so many strangers – and I love encounters with strangers. Wait, that sounds odd. What I mean is I love meeting people and hearing their stories.”
Rami Malek, The Guardian

Moths to a Flame

"This is it, this is the Big Apple. The big sin city. The city where you can do anything. Get a hamburger at 2 in the morning, where you can get dirty pictures, a hooker. You can get anything you goddamn want in the world. So it brings everybody like moths to a flame." 
Cindy Adams, The Guardian

Feeling Alive

"Los Angeles is great, it's lovely and everybody loves the weather and one has a kind of life there. But after a while it's like the land that time forgot; you fall asleep and suddenly 10 years have passed. I like to feel alive and New York is the place for that."
Brian Cox, The Guardian

Mass of Contradictions

"While the full meaning of the city may prove elusive, all New Yorkers are painfully aware that it remains an intractable mass of contradictions. It is not just the extremes of wealth and poverty living side by side. It is as though every condition is locked in a struggle with its opposite, fixing New York in a state of permanent tension. Tolerance vies with racism, social mobility with elitism, sophistication with insecurity, efficiency with corruption, philanthropy with excess. Neither will yield to the other which is one reason New York defies definition."
Amanda Foreman, The Guardian

Femme Fatale

Central Park (Pixabay)

"New York. Like a femme fatale, it is irresistibly compelling."
Amanda Foreman, The Guardian

Potemkin Village

"Impermanence is the great irony and, of all New York's contradictions, perhaps the biggest. What seems to be creative energy is often just feverish activity inside a ballooning bubble. New York is like a Potemkin Village, its inhabitants mere imports for the day."
Amanda Foreman, The Guardian

Confident Wildlife

"I am not a fan of rats or pigeons. In New York City, they have become very confident. When I was a child, you went on the subways and the rats would stay down on the tracks, but now they hang out on the platform."
Julia Stiles, The Guardian

Second-Rate Civilization

Greenpoint

"For Manhattanites, Brooklyn was the sticks, a second-rate civilization. My friends and I, we were so snobby. Living in the Bronx or Brooklyn was incredible … for me that was like a foreign country."
William Klein, The Guardian

Too Everything

"New York is full of crazy people, and I like that. Eventually the city sort of kicked me out. It just gets to you – it's too hot, it's too smelly, it's too crowded, it's too… everything."
Jamie Bell, The Guardian

Fatiguing and Enriching

Williamsburg

"Living in New York is lonely and inspiring, fatiguing and enriching. It's not for everyone, but that's the nature of the city."
Rose Byrne, The Guardian

Bigger Fish to Fry

Stuyvesant Cove Park

"People in New York are really cool. They're like: 'I loved your movie.' That's it. They've got bigger fish to fry."
Emily Blunt, The Guardian

Berlin or Brooklyn

"Everyone who does not live in Berlin lives in Brooklyn now."
Don DeLillo, The Guardian