Quotes / New York City

"It'll be a great place if they ever finish it."

— O. Henry

We met in the springtime at a rock-and-roll show
It was on the Bowery when it was time to go
We kissed on the subway in the middle of the night
I held your hand, you held mine, it was the best night of my life

'Cause everyone's your friend in New York City
And everything looks beautiful when you're young and pretty
The streets are paved with diamonds and there's just so much to see
But the best thing about New York City is you and me

The Statue of Liberty, Staten Island Ferry,
Co-op City, Katz's and Tiffany's
Central Park, Brooklyn Bridge,
the Empire State where King Kong lived
Coney Island and Times Square, Rockefeller Center
Wish I was there

— "New York City" by grrl-rock group cub, though you may be more familiar with TMBG's version.

"New York is a narrow island off the coast of New Jersey devoted to the pursuit of lunch."

— Raymond Solokov

"If this was the Roman Empire I'd live in Rome. Today, it is the American Empire, so I live in New York!"

— John Lennon

So Fisk’s evil plot to gentrify Hell’s Kitchen and destroy its local character seems a little bit late. As Fisk talks about his rough experiences growing up in the area, it feels like he should be sipping fair trade coffee and enjoying an organic bagel. “When I was a kid, I used to dream about what it would be like… to live somewhere far away from Hell’s Kitchen,” he tells Vanessa, glossing over the fact that there are kids now who dream about being able to afford the opportunity to live somewhere in Hell’s Kitchen.

— Darren Mooney on Daredevil (2015)

"But maybe there's something inherent in Manhattan's geography and climate that makes it the only place where New York City, in spirit and form, can truly exist. I was watching a documentary about the city a while back, and they had Donald Trump come on (don't laugh), and Trump explained how the bedrock underneath Manhattan was uniquely suited to supporting shitloads of buildings and city infrastructure on top of it. Now, he's probably full of shit, because he's always full of shit. But maybe, when you try to recreate NYC 800 miles to the south, you end up with Jacksonville, no matter how hard you try to avoid it."

— Drew Magary

"Manhattan (which is as much of NY as is dealt with in most texts) is highly foregrounded and highly dramatic. It is a city whose fate can be seen: a vast Polder, with a circumambient Threshold and Portals galore. In all of this, NY differs radically from London, the only city more frequently found in fantasy texts (apart, possibly, from New Orleans). London, though it contains worlds of drama, is very rarely itself the occasion of drama. Contrariwise, many fantasy novels deal with NY as an entity inside which, and to which and in terms of which, portentous events may occur."

— The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997) entry on New York City

New York, New York —
A hell of a town
The Bronx is up and the Battery's down
The People ride in a hole in the ground
New York, New York —
It's a hell of a town.

— Leonard Bernstein, "New York, New York", On The Town

Start spreading the news
I'm leaving today
I want to be a part of it
New York, New York!

— "New York, New York" (sung by Liza Minelli for the Martin Scorsese movie New York, New York, but covered famously by Frank Sinatra)

New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made of
There's nothing you can’t do
Now you’re in New York
These streets will make you feel brand new
Big lights will inspire you
Let's hear it for New York...

— "Empire State of Mind", by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys

"Chapter One. He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion." Uh, no, make that: "He-he romanticized it all out of proportion. OK… To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin." Uh, now let me start this over... "Chapter One: He was too romantic about Manhattan, as he was about everything else. He thrived on the hustle bustle of the crowds and the traffic. To him, New York meant beautiful women and street smart guys who seemed to know all the angles." Ah, corny, too corny for, you know, my taste. Let me, let me try and make it more profound... "Chapter One: He adored New York City. To him it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. The same lack of individual integrity that caused so many people to take the easy way out was rapidly turning the town of his dreams in..." No, it’s gonna be too preachy, I mean, you know, let’s face it, I wanna sell some books here. "Chapter One: He adored New York City. Although to him it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. How hard it was to exist in a society desensitized by drugs, loud music, television, crime, garbage..." Too angry. I don’t wanna be angry. "Chapter One. He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. Behind his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat." Oh, I love this! "New York was his town, and it always would be."

— Woody Allen's opening monologue to Manhattan

"NYC is an extreme place. It’s great at being exceptional and it’s great at being awful. It’s a high-priced filth bucket with great weather 25% of the time. It’s supposedly this world-leading city and yet it’s often behind the innovation curve and feels less futuristic than many other cities. The restaurants are world-class but it can also sometimes be hard to find a fresh salad for lunch. I could go on.
But it’s also a place where within a 20-minute walk of my apartment I can find every cuisine in the world, every type of art, every kind of shop, and a million different cultural experiences (many in secret underground nooks). It feels like the entire world is crammed into this city.
Among US cities, it’s not #1 for tech (SF), entertainment (LA), politics (DC), medicine (Boston), or a handful of other major industries. But it’s at least top 5 in every industry. NYC has breadth like nowhere else I know (at least in the US). This is especially appealing to me since I like to dig into a lot of totally different areas with my writing.
[...]
Finally, I really like the historical aspect. 300 years of human ingenuity gives a place a lot of character (I know that sounds paltry to non-Americans but it’s a big deal here!). Every street has an epic story to it. It makes the city like a big history museum to explore, and I like knowing that I’ll never even scratch the surface.
The awful things about NYC suck. A lot. But for me at least, the good things make living here a clear net positive."

— Tim Urban, in response to "Why do you live in NYC?"

"New York City is as amazing in its own way as the Grand Canyon. As a matter of fact, you can't help thinking that maybe Nature would have made New York City look the way it does if it had had the money and the know-how.
[...]
New Yorkers learn young to proceed against all odds. If something's in the way, they move it or go under it or over it or around it, but they keep going. There's no sad resignation to defeat. New Yorkers assume they can win. They have this feeling that they're not going to be defeated.
[...]
Whether New York is a pleasure or a pain depends on what it is you wish to fill your life with. Or whether you wish to fill it at all. There is an endless supply of satisfaction available to anyone who wishes to help himself to it. It's not an easy city, but the cups of its residents runneth over with life.
It's a city of extremes. There's more of everything. The range of notes is wider. The highs are higher. The lows lower. The goods, the bads are better and worse. And if you're unimpressed by statistics, consider the fact that in 1972 the cops alone in New York City were charged with stealing $73 million worth of heroin. There are 1,700 murders in an average year.
Neither of those statistics is so much a comment on crime as it is a comment on the size and diversity of New York City.
No one keeps a statistic on Life. The probability is that, like everything else, there's more of it in New York."

— Andy Rooney, "In Praise of New York City"

I'm not depressed, man
I'm just a fucking New Yorker
Who knows that sittin' in traffic with these bastards is torture

— El-P, "Drive"

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