Patience and Grit

Grand Central Terminal

"Mass hysteria is a terrible force, yet New Yorkers always seem to escape it by some tiny margin: they sit in stalled subways without claustrophobia, they extricate themselves from panic situations by some lucky wisecrack, they meet confusion and congestion with patience and grit--a sort of perpetual muddling through."

E.B. White, Here is New York

Supplementary Vitamin

"Every facility is inadequate--the hospitals and schools and playgrounds are overcrowded, the express highways are feverish, the unimproved highways and bridges are bottlenecks; there is not enough air and not enough light, and there is usually either too much heat or too little. But the city makes up for its hazards and deficiencies by supplying its citizens with massive doses of a supplementary vitamin--the sense of belonging to something unique, cosmopolitan, mighty and unparalleled."
E.B. White, Here is New York

Sense of Neighborhood

Tudor City

"So complete is each neighborhood, and so strong the sense of neighborhood, that many a New Yorker spends a lifetime within the confines of an area smaller than a country village. Let him walk two blocks from his corner and he is in a strange land and will feel uneasy till he gets back."
E.B. White, Here is New York

Owning New York

Union Square West

"The beauty of New York is that it allows you to own a piece of it. It readily shares itself to those of us, crazy enough, to believe we deserve to take it."
Alyssa Grace Magsano, Here is New York

Spectacle

Pier 17

"New York provides not only a continuing excitation but also a spectacle that is continuing."
E.B. White, Here is New York

Of Comfort and Convenience

"New Yorkers temperamentally do not crave comfort and convenience — if they did they would live elsewhere."
E.B. White, Here is New York

Radioactive Cloud

West 23rd

"The citizens of New York are tolerant not only from disposition but from necessity. The city has to be tolerant, otherwise it would explode in a radioactive cloud of hate and rancor and bigotry."
E.B. White, Here is New York

Music and Internal Engines

"The city is like poetry: it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines."
E.B. White, Here is New York

The Stubborn Fact of Annihilation

Hazmat truck on Central Park South

"All dwellers in cities must dwell with the stubborn fact of annihilation; in New York the fact is somewhat more concentrated because of the concentration of the city itself and because, of all targets, New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer who might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm."
E.B. White, Here is New York

White Plume

Chrysler Building

"It is to the nation what the white church spire is to the village—the visible symbol of aspiration and faith, the white plume saying that the way is up."

E.B. White, Here is New York

The Loftiest of Cities

Empire State Building

"New York is nothing like Paris; it is nothing like London; and it is not Spokane multiplied by sixty, or Detroit multiplied by four. It is by all odds the loftiest of cities. It even managed to reach the highest point in the sky at the lowest moment of the depression."

E.B. White, Here is New York

Willing to Be Lucky

Columbus Circle

"New York. It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill them, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky."
E.B. White, Here is New York