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

New York Makes You Better

East 42nd Street

"New York is the city that never sleeps. It's the only place to get better at being you, in this place that doesn't rest; you're always working hard to keep up with this city, and it makes you better."
John Clay III, Playbill

Real New Yorker

Lower East Side

"That's how I know you're a real New Yorker. You don't swim or drive."
Anonymous, quoted in Overheard in New York

City in a Hurry

Third Avenue

"If New York has a unifying characteristic, it is a spirit of urgency. It is a city in a hurry."
Paul Crowell, The City

Brio and Energy

Williamsburg Bridge

"In New York — whose subway trains in particular have been 'tattooed' with a brio and an energy to put our own rude practitioners to shame — not an inch of free space is spared except that of advertisements."
Gilbert Adair, Myth and Memories

Roots in New York

Third Avenue

"New York was a great place to live if you had roots there. If you were part of it. But some people weren't born for steel jungles and the fast-paced lifestyle and—let's face it—the cost of living. I used to love that I blended in what the crowd, that I was another face among faces, another writer chasing their dreams in the neighborhood coffee shop. But the longer I lived there, the more gum littered the sidewalk and rust crept in."
Ashley Poston, The Dead Romantics

Bemoaning the Disappearance of New York

57 Great Jones Street

"Bemoaning the disappearance of the New York is a time-honored tradition: no one has ever arrived here early enough to experience the city at its greatest, and everyone who comes after you has arrived too late."
Glynnis MacNicol, The Daily Beast

Vital and Fertile

Straus Park

"New York? Love it! I feel in cadence here. New York is so vital and so fertile."

Jackie Skarvellis, James Dean is Dead! (Long Live James Dean) 

What America Should Be

Midtown Manhattan

"New York is such a melting pot of so many worlds in one. That’s what America should be, to me. It should be a place that’s shared with whoever wants to explore and learn and grow."
Gigi Hadid, Variety

Civic Choreography

World Trade Center station

"To walk in New York is to enter a sprawling civic choreography with a cast of millions, and Ben falls effortlessly into its rhythms of haste, purpose, possibility. He knows the steps because he listens to the city call them out."
Tucker Shaw, When You Call My Name

Loving Life

Midtown Manhattan

"What I love most about New York: the range and diversity of human experience. For me, loving New York is loving life."
Ben Levy, New York Magazine

New York as a Character

SoHo

"New York is impossible not to see as a character. It is a place that demands you be in a relationship with it. It is a place I’ll never get tired of."
Naomi Krupitsky, Shondaland

Loud and Obnoxious Friend

East Village

"New York may annoy and infuriate you at times, but, to me, it's like a loud and obnoxious friend who you can never quite bring yourself to leave for too long."
Pat Farnack, The Little Red Book of New York Wisdom

The Opinion of Out-of-Towners

Port Authority Bus Terminal

"There's no one New York. There's multiple New Yorks. Anybody who sits and says 'I know New York' is from out of town."
Pete Hamill, quoted in The New York Daily News

Self Love

Houston Street

"One of the appealing aspects of New York is its unabashed love affair with itself, its pride and confidence in its brashness, its bigness, its New Yorkness."
Prue Leith, Choral Society

Paris of America

Washington Square Park

"The city of New York is the Paris of America. There are other municipalities which are doing their best in their several ways to rival her, but it is toward New York that all the eyes in the country are turned, and from which they take suggestion as a cat laps milk."
Robert Grant, The Art of Living

Immigrants

Chinatown

"New York literally heaved with immigrants, as if all the world had been squeezed into one noisy, hectic city."
Mary Sharratt, Ecstasy

Growing Up in Brooklyn

Coney Island

"Growing up in Brooklyn is not for the faint of heart. It really made me who I am today. I feel like if you’re from Brooklyn, you can make it anywhere. I’ve traveled so many places in the world, and I’ve always found my way."

Siddiq Saunderson, Mr. Feel Good

Nowhere Else I'd Rather Be

Met Museum

"New York City. How can you not love her? It's the city of dreams. From the subway system that takes you anywhere you need to go, to the incredible museums at our fingertips. It's the city that never sleeps. Why would you want to be anywhere else?"
Ondine Jean-Baptiste, NYC Next

Elevated

Roosevelt Island Tram

"To be from New York is to be already elevated by its very attribution: must have the muster to survive the metropolitan sieve, must be good."
Mariah Bergeron, The Chart