Quotes & Sayings About Leaving New York

In leaving Hollywood and coming to New York, I feel I can be more myself. After all, if I can't be myself, what's the good of being anything at all? — Marilyn Monroe

It's just a superstition, but looking at the river, the boats, the sign leaving Brooklyn that says "Watchtower" in big red letters, is a ritual that reminds me I am small, I am one of thousands--no--one of millions of people who looked at this river before me, from a boat or a car or the window of the D train, who came to New York with a dream, who achieved it or didn't, but nonetheless made the same effort I'm making now. It keeps things in perspective, and strangely, it gives me hope. — Lauren Graham

Indeed, if I understand this global-warming business correctly, the danger is that the waters will rise and drown the whole of Massachusetts, New York City, Long Island, the California coast and a few big cities on the Great Lakes - in other words, every Democratic enclave will be wiped out leaving only the solid Republican heartland. Politically speaking, for conservatives there's no downside to global warming. — Mark Steyn

I didn't worry about leaving the fast lane - I was just so consumed with my baby that it seemed like the right thing to do. I never felt like I left New York, though. If you've lived in a place and loved it, you never feel like you left it. — Sissy Spacek

June 28, 1983 Mianus River Bridge Greenwich, Connecticut George Tesla was drunk. This wasn't new for him, but the reason was. He was going to be a father. Fifty years old, and he'd knocked up a thirty-year-old carnie. Someone careful enough to live through a trapeze act ought to be careful enough to not get pregnant. But she hadn't been. Tatiana flat-out refused to talk about abortion or adoption or any sensible solution to the problem. She was perfectly willing to talk about leaving him to raise the baby alone, but nothing else. Her mind was set. He leaned against the cold side of the bridge and took a long sip of Jack Daniel's from his silver hip flask. He'd bought the flask when he was first made professor of mathematics at New York University. Another thing that would have to change, since Tatiana had told him she had no intention of giving up performing to move to New York — Rebecca Cantrell

In leaving New York in 1957, I did leave without regret the literary demimonde of agents and would-be's and with-it nonparticipants; this world seemed unnutritious and interfering. — John Updike

Start spreading the news, I am leaving today.
I want to be a part of it, New York, New York. — Frank Sinatra

I truly believe my job starts the minute I leave the baseball field. Going out and catching ground balls and hitting, that's a job, and that's what I've wanted to do ever since I was a kid. But when you think about leaving that field, that's when the job and the demands really start. In New York, Seattle, every city. The community, the media, business stuff. You have to stay on a narrow path. — Alex Rodriguez

At the time I would have endorsed the radical notions of R. D. Laing that insanity was a sane reaction to an insane society. Leaving the insane society to set up an independent self-sufficient commune seemed like a very sensible noble brave thing to do - plus it figured to be good for my mental health. Had I gone crazy in Boston or New York I would have blamed my culture and society without a second thought. The arguments were all packed, polished, and ready to fly. — Mark Vonnegut

"Entertainers Of Faith," funnyman Jim Gaffigan isn't ashamed of his Catholicism. He's seen here leaving a New York comedy club with his Bible in hand. — Jim Gaffigan

It's just that every time I've come home for the past five years - before that, even. From college - something's changed a little more . . ." " - and you're not sure you like it, eh?" Henry was grinning in the moonlight and she could see him. She sat up. "I don't know if I can tell you, honey. When you live in New York, you often have the feeling that New York's not the world. I mean this: every time I come home, I feel like I'm coming back to the world, and when I leave Maycomb it's like leaving the world. It's silly. I can't explain it, and what makes it sillier is that I'd go stark raving living in Maycomb." Henry said, "You wouldn't, you know. I don't mean to press you for an answer - don't move - but you've got to make up your mind to one thing, Jean Louise. You're gonna see change, you're gonna see Maycomb change its face completely in our lifetime. Your trouble, now, you want to have your cake and eat it: you want to stop the clock, but you can't. Sooner or later you'll — Harper Lee

Each day, I read the New York Times before leaving for the theater. And I have this standing assignment: connect the world of Anthem to the late breaking events of the day. — Jeff Britting

Start spreading the news, I'm leaving today. I want to be a part of it. New York ... New York ... New York, New York - Fred Ebb/John Kander — Karla M. Nashar

I don't know if I can tell you, honey. When you live in New York, you often have the feeling that New York's not the world. I mean this: every time I come home, I feel like I'm coming back to the world, and when I leave Maycomb it's like leaving the world. It's silly. I can't explain it, and what makes it sillier is that I'd go stark raving living in Maycomb. — Harper Lee

I was only going to stay six months. I stayed three years, and I never stopped thinking about leaving. But when I left, I left my entire life behind. I have to explain to you why I no longer live in New York, but first I have to explain to myself why I stayed so long. — Eula Biss

I really don't feel good about leaving my house anymore. I don't feel really good about being anywhere in New York City alone anymore. — Cecily McMillan

Soon after Harris's HeLa-chicken study, a pair of researchers at New York University discovered that human-mouse hybrids lost their human chromosomes over time, leaving only the mouse chromosomes. This allowed scientists to begin mapping human genes to specific chromosomes by tracking the order in which genetic traits vanished. If a chromosome disappeared and production of a certain enzyme stopped, researchers knew the gene for that enzyme must be on the most recently vanished chromosome. Scientists in laboratories throughout North America and Europe began fusing cells and using them to map genetic traits to specific chromosomes, creating a precursor to the human genome map we have today. — Rebecca Skloot

On his best walks, he was able to feel that he was nowhere. And this, finally, was all he ever asked of things: to be nowhere. New York was the nowhere he had built around himself, and he realized that he has no intention of ever leaving it again. — Paul Auster

Travel by air is not travel at all, but simply a change of location; so my wife and daughter and I went to San Francisco by train, leaving Boston on a Wednesday morning in June and, then after lunch in New York, boarding Amtrak's Broadway to Chicago. — Andre Dubus

The spirit around leaving New York, for me, was that I just felt I needed to do something really outside of my comfort zone. And I really couldn't tell you at the time why I needed to do it. It wasn't like I was running from something dark; it was a desire to shake things up. — John Curran

In theory, sure, Gregor could still go home. Pack up his three-year-old sister, Boots, get his mom out of the hospital, where she was recovering from the plague, and have his bat, Ares, fly them back up to the laudry room of their appartment building in New York City. Ares, his bond, who saved his life numerous times and who had had nothing but suffering since he had met Gregor. He tried to imagine the parting. "Well, Ares, it's been great. I'm heading home now. I know by leaving I'm completely dooming to annihilation everbody who's helped me down here, but I'm really not up for this whole war thing anymore. So, fly you high, you know?" Like that would ever happen. — Suzanne Collins

I'm not leaving New York. And neither is anyone else. We're here. We are quintessential Americans - we're not only American, but New York-American. — Lou Reed

I loved the excitement and the pleasures of life in New York, the opportunities for advancement, the pursuit of ambition, the theaters, the places of amusement, and such nights as the last I spent with you just as I was leaving for the West. — Cass Gilbert

That was another thing Ruby would miss about New York, if she were leaving: she's miss how much space people gave you. You could have a fucking sobbing fit on the subway and no one would mess with you. You could barf in a garbage can on the street corner and no one would mess with you. If you were giving off invisible vibes, people respected that. People thought New Yorkers were rude, but really they were just leaving you to your own stuff. It was respectful! In a city with so many people, a New Yorker would always pretend not to see you when you didn't want to be seen. — Emma Straub

More than one-third of congressional staffers turn to a career in lobbying after leaving Capitol Hill. It's clear the staffer-turned-lobbyist's value to special interests depends on the robustness of his or her network on Capitol Hill. According to an August 2010 study, when a lobbyist's former boss on Capitol Hill left office, the lobbyist's salary declined by an average of 50 percent in the six months following the departure.27 Moving from Capitol Hill to K Street isn't limited to staffers: In 2010, 37 percent of the newly out-of-office members of Congress went to work for lobbying firms or clients. After losing his run for Senate in 2006, Tennessee Democrat Harold Ford Jr. moved to New York to take a job with Merrill Lynch with a guaranteed annual compensation of $2 million. At the time he had no experience in finance. What he was paid for were his networks: — Christopher L. Hayes

I think me leaving Detroit shaped my style. Me leaving, going to New York, going to L.A. and seeing what they were doing there. I think that inspired me more than what people were doing back home. — Danny Brown

In 2001 New York came under attack, and thousands of people simply evaporated, leaving behind only dust and bits of gold Rolex watches. We were told that we had nothing to worry about, that we should go shopping. I was eager to please my country, for shopping had long been an answer for me, but what I couldn't pay for, I stole. I started to accumulate stuff I felt would make me feel whole: I surrounded myself with symbols of status. I believed the TV commercials with all my heart. I felt that those material things I was being sold defined me. — Joe Pantoliano

editor in New York and my mom and dad on the phone. My body is weak and bloated. I'm slowly poisoning myself to death. And it's not like I haven't seen what this shit does to people. The most fucked-up detoxes I've ever seen are the people coming off alcohol. It's worse than heroin, worse than benzos, worse than anything. Alcohol can pickle your brain - leaving you helpless, like a child - infantilized - shitting in your pants - ranting madness - disoriented - angry - terrified. But that's not gonna be me, I mean, it can't be. I may hate myself. I may fantasize about suicide. But I'm way too vain to let myself die an alcoholic death. There's nothing glamorous about alcoholism. You don't go out like Nic Cage in Leaving Las Vegas, with a gorgeous woman riding you till your heart stops. Alcoholism takes you down slow, robbing you of every last bit of dignity on your way — Nic Sheff

He's writing his name in water," I said. "What's that?" It was the half-regretful term - borrowed from the headstone of John Keats - that Crabtree used to describe his own and others' failure to express a literary gift through any actual writing on paper. Some of them, he said, just told lies; others wove plots out of the gnarls and elf knots of their lives and then followed them through to resolution. That had always been Crabtree's chosen genre - thinking his way into an attractive disaster and then attempting to talk his way out, leaving no record and nothing to show for his efforts but a reckless reputation and a small dossier in the files of the Berkeley and New York City police departments. — Michael Chabon

The greatest number of drug addicts are to be found in Teheran and in Karachi, not in the West. Not in New York believe it or not. It's the same with the roles of slavery, racism and imperialism in the world. These institutions were present in other cultures. However, it was Western civilization which did something about slavery, about racism and voluntarily dissolved its empires leaving behind a very positive legacy of institutions not to mention buildings and roadways. — Ibn Warraq

Group, was only 29 when his father died suddenly in New York. His elder brother took the reins, but died of cancer just five years later, leaving behind a young widow and three children. Prior to that, another brother had decided to quit the family business. In parallel, a one year long textile strike spearheaded by Datta Samant had brought the textile industry to ruin; Morarjee Mills, the family's mainstay, was incurring massive losses. Piramal recounts that he survived those troubled times by reminding himself of one particular story: — Ashwin Sanghi

Don't be." She changed gear with a crash and a groan. "You know the white population all around here is falling? You go out there, you find ghost towns. How you going to keep them down on the farm, after they seen the world on their television screens? And it's not worth anyone's while to farm the Badlands anyhow. They took our lands, they settled here, now they're leaving. They go south. They go west. Maybe if we wait for enough of them to move to New York and Miami and L.A. we can take the whole of the middle back without a fight. — Anonymous

There was a time when I was practicing law in New York and I wanted to find something else to do. So I ended up leaving the practice of law to pursue my art and it just happened to be out of Lego bricks. — Nathan Sawaya