Quotes & Sayings About Manhattan New York

Actually, New York is great for playing around. I made a lot of studies for New York-a big vacuum cleaner lying on the Battery in Manhattan. — Claes Oldenburg

Once one concedes that a single world government is not necessary, then where does one logically stop at the permissibility of separate states? If Canada and the United States can be separate nations without being denounced as in a state of impermissible 'anarchy', why may not the South secede from the United States? New York State from the Union? New York City from the state? Why may not Manhattan secede? Each neighbourhood? Each block? Each house? Each person? — Murray N. Rothbard

Clark liked to think he knew London but the truth was he'd spent most of his adult life in New York, secure within the confines of Manhattan's idiot-proof grid, and on this particular evening London's tangle of streets was inscrutable. — Emily St. John Mandel

Vehement silhouettes of Manhattan - that vertical city with unimaginable diamonds. — Le Corbusier

Toys R Us is closing its FAO Schwarz store on Fifth Avenue in New York City, citing the high cost of running the retail space in that location, the company said Friday. It is seeking another Manhattan space. — Anonymous

I was born and raised in New York City, Manhattan, uptown. — Ana Ortiz

New York was always more expensive than any other place in the United States, but you could live in New York - and by New York, I mean Manhattan. Brooklyn was the borough of grandparents. We didn't live well. We lived in these horrible places. But you could live in New York. And you didn't have to think about money every second. — Fran Lebowitz

It is an art form to hate New York City properly. So far I have always been a featherweight debunker of New York; it takes too much energy and endurance to record the infinite number of ways the city offends me. Were I to list them all, I would fill up a book the size of the Manhattan yellow pages, and that would merely be the prologue. Every time I submit myself to the snubs and indignities of that swaggering city and set myself adrift among the prodigious crowds, a feeling of displacement, profound and enervating, takes me over, killing all the coded cells of my hard-won singularity. The city marks my soul with a most profane, indelible graffiti. There is too much of too much there. — Pat Conroy

That's Manhattan today - all the money goes up top, while the infrastructure wastes away from neglect. The famous skyline is a cheap trick now, a sleight-of-hand to draw your eye from the truth, as illusory as a bodybuilder with osteoporosis. — Andrew Vachss

I got a hotel room at New York New York in Las Vegas and I was very happy. They've got that rollercoaster encircling the entire premises, just like Manhattan. — Mitch Hedberg

When I think of New York City, I think of all the girls, the Jewish girls, the Italian girls, the Irish, Polack, Chinese, German, Negro, Spanish, Russian girls, all on parade in the city. I don't know whether it's something special with me or whether every man in the city walks around with the same feeling inside him, but I feel as though I'm at a picnic in this city. I like to sit near the women in the theaters, the famous beauties who've taken six hours to get ready and look it. And the young girls at the football games, with the red cheeks, and when the warm weather comes, the girls in their summer dresses ... — Irwin Shaw

[Gethin] was used to New York and schlepping down to Buddakan or a trendy bistro in Manhattan's meatpacking district or some other hip and happening joint, she thought, running out of 'Sex and the City' hotspots. Welsh cuisine probably wasn't sexy enough for him now, but once you got over the sight of laver bread and cockles, all that iodine was supposed to do wonders for your love life. On the other hand, Gethin Lewis didn't look like a man who needed any chemical crutch to boost his libido. — Christine Stovell

Back in the "leather and lace" eighties, I was the fantasy editor for a publishing company in New York City. It was a great time to be young and footloose on the streets of Manhattan - punk rock and folk music were everywhere; Blondie, the Eurythmics, Cyndi Lauper, and Prince were all strutting their stuff on the newly created MTV; and the eighties' sense of style meant I could wear my scruffy black leather into the office without turning too many heads. The fantasy field was growing by leaps and bounds, and I was right in the middle of it, working with authors I'd worshiped as a teen, and finding new ones to encourage and publish. — Terri Windling

I am a curious creature and put my finger in as many cakes as I can: history, film, technology, etc. I'm also a freak for urban history, particularly Barcelona, Paris and New York. I know more weird stuff about 19th-century Manhattan than is probably healthy. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Brooklyn Heights itself is a window on the port. Here, where the perspective is fixed by the towers of Manhattan and the hills of New Jersey and Staten Island, the channels running between seem fingers of the world ocean. Here one can easily embrace the suggestion, which Whitman felt so easily, that the whole American world opens out from here, north and west. — Alfred Kazin

There was Babylon and Nineveh; they were built of brick. Athens was gold marble columns. Rome was held up on broad arches of rubble. In Constantinople the minarets flame like great candles round the Golden Horn ... Steel, glass, tile, concrete will be the materials of the skyscraper. Crammed on the narrow island the millionwindowed buildings will just glittering, pyramid on pyramid like the white cloudhead above a thunderstorm. — John Dos Passos

I used to go up to her house. She lived upstate [in New York] and I lived in Manhattan; you're living in a lot of noise and my career was being built. For me to spend time with Nina [Simone] is to spend a lot of quiet time. — Nikki Giovanni

I try to remember what it was like to be a kid in New York. I lived in different parts of my childhood in Manhattan on the Upper West Side, where 'When You Reach Me' is set, and also in the Midwood section of Brooklyn. — Rebecca Stead

To see what Times Square looked like before a city was there, we turn to a remarkable project called Welikia, which grew out of a smaller project called Mannahatta. The Welikia project has produced a detailed ecological map of the landscape in New York City at the time of the arrival of Europeans, is a fantastic snapshot of a different New York. In 1609, the island of Manhattan was part of a landscape of rolling hills, marshes, woodlands, lakes, and rivers. — Randall Munroe

If I have open time, and I'm in Manhattan, I'll just walk to wherever I'm going, even if I could get there faster on the subway. I just love walking the streets of New York. — Siri Hustvedt

The full moon rose above the harbor as brightly lit tour boats skimmed along the black water, the brilliant cluster of lower Manhattan piled like stacks of coins from a treasure chest in the distance. Up the river, bridges arched across the wide water all the way up the east side, while the Brooklyn side was marked by soft, round lights, like a string of pearls. — Andrew Cotto

He who touches the soil of Manhattan and the pavement of New York, touches, whenever he knows or not, Walt Whitman. — Lewis Mumford

It was a brave city, she decided, eyeing them. Brave in its other sense; not courageous, so much as outstanding, commanding. It was too nice a town to die in. Though it had no honeysuckle vines and no balconies and no guitars, it was meant for love. For living and for love, and the two were inseparable; one didn't come without the other.
("Too Nice A Day To Die") — Cornell Woolrich

I was part of that group of kids growing up in the '80s under the Reagan regime, what I used to call 'living in the shadow of Dr. Manhattan,' where we would have dreams all the time that New York City was being destroyed, and that that wall of light and destruction was rolling out and would just devour our neighborhood. — Junot Diaz

Manhattan cabs are born old. — Jean Shepherd

It was generally agreed that a coffin-size studio on Avenue D was preferable to living in one of the boroughs. Moving from one Brooklyn or Staten Island neighborhood to another was fine, but unless you had children to think about, even the homeless saw it as a step down to leave Manhattan. Customers quitting the island for Astoria or Cobble Hill would claim to welcome the change of pace, saying it would be nice to finally have a garden or live a little closer to the airport. They'd put a good face one it, but one could always detect an underlying sense of defeat. The apartments might be bigger and cheaper in other places, but one could never count on their old circle of friend making the long trip to attend a birthday party. Even Washington Heights was considered a stretch. People referred to it as Upstate New York, though it was right there in Manhattan. — David Sedaris

The official government radio station was still broadcasting that the New York Power Authority would have power back up to Con Edison and lower Manhattan — Matthew Mather

From 1985 to 1994, I lived in Manhattan in a big old loft right off Times Square. I could walk to work, which was in a couple of Broadway theaters, to Howard Stern's studio, and to 30 Rock for 'Letterman' and 'SNL.' Even in New York, walking to work is homey and folksy, like living in a small town. — Penn Jillette

And it was to this city, whenever I went home, that I always knew I must return, for it was mistress of one's wildest hopes, protector of one's deepest privacies. It was half insane with its noise, violence, and decay, but it gave one the tender security of fulfillment. On winter afternoons, from my office, there were sunsets across Manhattan when the smog itself shimmered and glowed ... Despite its difficulties, which become more obvious all the time, one was constantly put to the test by this city, which finally came down to its people; no other place in America had quite such people and they would not allow you to go stale; in the end they were its triumph and its reward. — Willie Morris

In 1964, when we first arrived in New York City, I remember vividly seeing the skyline of Manhattan, and our first proposal of 1964 was to wrap two lower Manhattan buildings. We never got permission. — Christo

For most visitors to Manhattan, both foreign and domestic, New York is the Shrine of the Good Time. "I don't see how you stand it," they often say to the native New Yorker who has been sitting up past his bedtime for a week in an attempt to tire his guest out. "It's all right for a week or so, but give me the little old home town when it comes to living." And, under his breath, the New Yorker endorses the transfer and wonders himself how he stands it. — Robert Benchley

[H]e could see the island of Manhattan off to the left. The towers were jammed together so tightly, he could feel the mass and stupendous weight.Just think of the millions, from all over the globe, who yearned to be on that island, in those towers, in those narrow streets! There it was, the Rome, the Paris, the London of the twentieth century, the city of ambition, the dense magnetic rock, the irresistible destination of all those who insist on being where things are happening-and he was among the victors! — Tom Wolfe

I seem to respond most to places that are more cosmopolitan because of my Manhattan upbringing. Some of the major international cities I've visited, like Madrid, Rome and London, have a lot of similarities and "New York" elements while ... having their own flavor. — Bobby Flay

Do you know how long God took to destroy the Tower of Babel, folks? Seven minutes. Do you know how long the Lord God took to destroy Babylon and Nineveh? Seven minutes. There's more wickedness in one block in New York City than there was in a square mile in Nineveh, and how long do you think the Lord God of Sabboath will take to destroy New York City and Brooklyn and the Bronx? Seven seconds. Seven Seconds. — John Dos Passos

You want proof evolution is for real, don't waste your time with fossils; just check out the New York City rat. They started out as immigrants, stowaways in some ship's cargo hold. Only the survivors got to breed, and they've been improving with every new
litter. Smarter, faster, stronger. Getting ready to rule. Manhattan wouldn't be the first island they took over. — Andrew Vachss

Children were allowed to lie down on the park as it was being moved. This was considered a concession, although no one knew why a concession was necessary, or why it was to children that this concession must be made. The biggest fireworks show in history lit the skies of New York City that night, and the Philarmonic played its heart out.
The children of New York lay on their backs, body to body, filling every inch of the park, as if it had been designed for them and that moment. The fireworks sprinkled down, dissolving in the air just before they reached the ground, and the children were pulled, one millimeter and one second at a time, into Manhattan and adulthood. By the time the park found its current resting place, every single one of the children had fallen asleep, and the park was a mosaic of their dreams. Some hollered out, some smiled unconsciously, some were perfectly still. — Jonathan Safran Foer

I wish my parents had raised me in Manhattan because I think it's the greatest thing you can do for a kid is to raise them in New York City. I can see this with my own children. — Woody Allen

I can tell you. In New York you are your own person. You may reach out and embrace all of Manhattan in sweet aloneness, or you can go to hell if you want to. — Harper Lee

You might find me cleverly clad, in black on black, at 28th and 7th Ave. — Jonathan P. Lamas

I simply assumed I would bundle up my New York wife with her New York interests, her New York pride, and remove her from her New York parents - leave the frantic, thrilling futureland of Manhattan behind - and transplant her to a little town on the river in Missouri, and all would be fine. — Gillian Flynn

Manhattan is basically this island in New York, where all the cool stuff is located. — Jason Medina

The city is tricky. The highs are so much higher, but in the lows you drop straight down again to bedrock. It helps that streets are snapped to a grid. There are also psychic boutiques and sidewalk prophets, but until you contrive your own love story set in that city, even one as warped as mine, you remain outside it, looking for signals in the white smoke that rises from under, in the sudden hot laundry smells and the LED typos of street vendors donuteasily becomes dount, ominously like don't, to my mind. There was a DOUNT sign on Second Avenue which more than once redirected my superstitious footsteps. — Olivia Sudjic

Crowds moved wherever he went, across the bridge to Manhattan, in New York, wherever he went, life flowed and eddied, but he was not part of it. — Pearl S. Buck

I feel like when being raised in New York City I have a particular perspective on things like Gay issues maybe, because I'm in the middle of Manhattan. — Joy Behar

So much for the recreational side of night life in the upper-bracket-income hotels of Manhattan. And in its root-origins the very word itself is implicit with implication: re-create. Analyze it and you'll see it also means to reproduce. But clever, ingenious Man has managed to sidetrack it into making life more livable.
("New York Blues") — Cornell Woolrich

In Manhattan, marriage is a trend. Couples kiss over their arugula and radicchio salads. They fondle each other's genitals while devouring their pasta puttanesca. By the time the tiramisu arrives, they've slid under the table. — Cynthia Heimel

Sometimes to walk in shaded parts of Manhattan is to be inserted into a Magritte: the street is night while the sky is day. — Joseph O'Neill

It never ceases to amaze me how many Christians, in the North and the South, continue to refer to the former as the "developed" and the latter as the "developing" world. When we in the South use this term to describe ourselves, we are evaluating ourselves by a set of cultural values that are alien to our own cultures, let alone to a Christian world-view! All our normative images and yardsticks of "development" are ideologically loaded. Who dictates that mushrooming TV satellite dishes and skyscrapers are signs of "development"? Who, apart from the automobile industry and the advertising agencies, seriously believes that a country with six-lane highways and multi-story car-parks is more "developed" than one whose chief mode of transport is railways? Does the fact that there are more telephones in Manhattan, New York, than in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, mean that human communication is more developed in the former than the latter? — Vinoth Ramachandra

Ella's supersonic voice followed her all the way to Bleecker Street and then dissolved amid the noisy profusion of shops, cafes, and restaurants and the crush of people that made the West Village of Manhattan unique in the world. In a single block you could buy fertility statues from Tanzania, rare Amazonian orchids, a pawned brass tuba, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, or the best, most expensive cup of coffee you ever tasted. It was the doughnuts, incidentally, that attracted Gaia. — Francine Pascal

On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy. It is this largess that accounts for the presence within the city's walls of a considerable section of the population; for the residents of Manhattan are to a large extent strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere and come to town, seeking sanctuary or fulfillment or some greater or lesser grail. The capacity to make such dubious gifts is a mysterious quality of New York. It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, 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

I'm from New York. My grandparents were settlers of Long Island City. When they came here, there was no bridge, and they had to hire a boat across the river. They had a farm, and my grandmother had to go once a week to Manhattan to buy provisions - very primitive. — Iris Apfel

For me, Woody Allen's 'Manhattan' defines New York. Both New York and Manhattan Island should be in black in white! I always hear the soundtrack of Gershwin in my head every time I go over the Queensboro Bridge, or come in from JFK because of it! — Brian Cox

Ellis Island lies in New York Harbor 1,300 feet from Jersey City, New Jersey, and one mile from the tip of Manhattan. At the time of the first European settlement, it was mostly mud, sand, and oyster shells, which nearly disappeared at high tide. — David Souter

If Broadway was a river running from the top of Manhattan down to the Battery, undulating with traffic and commerce and lights, then the east-west streets were eddies where, leaf-like, one could turn slow circles from the beginning to the ever shall be, world without end. — Amor Towles

The more boring a newspaper is, the more it is respected. The most respected newspaper in the United States is The New York Times, which has thousands of reporters constantly producing enormous front-page stories about bauxite ... The [New York] Post would write about bauxite only if famous celebrites were arrested for snorting it in an exclusive Manhattan nightclub. — Dave Barry

In dress, habits, manners, provincialism, routine and narrowness, he acquired that charming insolence, that irritating completeness, that sophisticated crassness, that overbalanced poise that makes the Manhattan gentleman so delightfully small in its greatness. — O. Henry

I remember being stunned at the New York skyline as I drove over this big freeway, coming across the flats in Seacaucus. All of a sudden it was looming up in front of me and I almost lost control of the car. I thought it was a vision. — Hunter S. Thompson

156/ I'd be very good at being rich, but no one has offered to test my talents in that department. ... New York was like a wealthy, handsome, intensely artistic, complex, slightly manic man who, for some inexplicable reason, was enthralled with me. Not that I ever met a man like that. Who needed men anyway? I'll take Manhattan. — Kim Addonizio

He fell in love with Manhattan's skyline, like a first-time brothel guest falling for a seasoned professional. He mused over her reflections in the black East River at dusk, dawn, or darkest night, and each haloed light-in a tower or strung along the jeweled and sprawling spider legs of the Brooklyn Bridge's spans-hinted at some meaning, which could be understood only when made audible by music and encoded in lyrics. — Arthur Phillips

I remember perfectly my first trip to New York, when I was on the bridge between Brooklyn and Manhattan, when I saw the skyscrapers. It was like an incredible dream. — Diego Della Valle

What followed would inaugurate one of the most spatially astonishing crime sprees in U.S. history. Nineteenth-century New York City police chief George Washington Walling estimated that Leslie and his gang were behind an incredible 80 percent of all bank robberies in the United States at the time, until Leslie's betrayal in the spring of 1878. This would include the great Manhattan Savings Institution heist of October 1878, which netted nearly $3 million from one of the most impregnable buildings in North America. — Geoff Manaugh

Out of the night you burn, Manhattan, In a vesture of gold
Spun of innumerable arcs, Flaring and multiplying
Gold at the uttermost circles fading Into the tenderest hint of jade, Or fusing in tremulous twilight blues, Robing the far-flung offices, Scintillant-storied, forking flame, Or soaring to luminous amethyst Over the steeples aureoled. — Lola Ridge

I'm older now, I'm a man getting near middle age, putting on a little fat and I still love to walk along Fifth Avenue at three o'clock on the east side of the street between Fiftieth and Fifty-seventh streets, they're all out then, making believe they're shopping, in their furs and their crazy hats, everything all concentrated from all over the world into eight blocks, the best furs, the best clothes, the handsomest women, out to spend money and feeling good about it, looking coldly at you, making believe they're not looking at you as you go past. — Irwin Shaw

It seems to me that the sad event of 9/11 has created a huge opportunity for the revitalization of lower Manhattan - new world class contemporary buildings, more open space and pedestrian connections, more sustainability, more culture and the rejuvenation of New York on the world stage again. — Paul Goldberger

I moved from a mountain with one traffic light to New York City when I was 17, and it was an amazing, eye opening, creative adventure. I would walk through the streets of Manhattan looking up at these huge buildings, amazed that I didn't know a single person in any of them. — Rachel Boston

I grew up a little north of New York City and went to high school at Regis, an all-boys tuition-free high school in Manhattan. — Phil Klay

Manhattan in the morning is a living stream of Purpose; everyone's got a place to be and a problem on their mind. That doesn't mean it's and unfriendly place
just busy and preoccupied. Personally, I love it. I'm a social creature but there are times and places you just don't want to do more than grunt at your fellow human being. — Laura Anne Gilman

The ghosts of Manhattan are not the spirits of the propertied classes; these are entombed in their names, their works, their constructions. New York's ghosts are the unresting souls of the poor, the marginal, the dispossessed, the depraved, the defective, the recalcitrant. They are the guardian spirits of the urban wilderness in which they lived and died. Unrecognized by the history that is common knowledge, they push invisibly behind it to erect their memorials in the collective unconscious. — Luc Sante

Gypsy cabs jostled and honked...Dollar vans lined the sidewalk and people piled in and out. As I walked down the slope, the buildings grew smaller and squalid. Trees vanished...and the heat picked up. Beyond the brick wall of the Navy Yard, the silver skyline of Manhattan glimmered in the distance like a mirage. The industrial remains of the flats were low and decrepit and mostly abandoned, though a few beeping forklifts unloaded trucks here and there. The storefronts were shuttered except for a bank busy with Orthodox Jews. The funk of a chicken processing plant contaminated the air.

I walked along the high brick wall that separated the Navy Yard from the street, frequently stepping over pulverized vials that sparkled like jewels on the sidewalk. There was no shade. I blinked away the dust. — Andrew Cotto

You know what I'm realizing now?" he said to her. "What?" she asked, looking at him adoringly. "We are sitting in the center of the world." She laughed. "You're so funny." "No, think about it," he said. "Columbus Circle is the center of Manhattan. Manhattan is the center of New York. New York is the center of America, and America is the center of the world. So we are sitting in the center of the world, right? — Imbolo Mbue

Brooklyn was like Philadelphia made better by its proximity to Manhattan. — Jonathan Franzen

I live in Manhattan but travel all around the world; I moved to Paris when I was 16; I lived in London twice. It's kind of like, if I want to move somewhere, I don't have anything holding me back. I don't have children. If I wanna live in a certain place, I'll go. But I've lived everywhere, and I prefer New York to everything. — Jessica White

When you're single, your weekend days are wide-open vistas that extend in every direction; in a relationship, they're like the sky over Manhattan: punctured, hemmed in, compressed. — Adelle Waldman

Every great wave of popular passion that rolls up on the prairies is dashed to spray when it strikes the hard rocks of Manhattan. — H.L. Mencken

Fang and I searched in every way we could think of and found a million institutes of one kind or another, in Manhattan and throughout New York state, but none of them seemed promising. My favorite? The Institute for Realizing Your Pet's Inner Potential. Anyone who can explain that to me, drop a line. — James Patterson

Most of the streets in Manhattan go in just one direction. Some of the larger crosstown streets and some of the major north - south avenues have two-way traffic, but in general, the odd-numbered streets go west, toward the Hudson River, and the "evens go east," as Jane, the native New Yorker, taught me. — Lauren Graham

Back and forth from Brooklyn to Manhattan. New York at night, from its bridges, is a miracle. When I first came to the city, it took all my fantasies and set them on fire, turned them into flickering constellations of light. Then it did the same with my history. As a dark speck of energy hurtling over the water toward that galaxy, I felt myself disappear. Relative to the image of infinity I was nothing, a clump of quantum matter skidding through the ether. It was as good as any drug. — Melissa Febos

I'd been to New York enough to know that it wasn't always easy to find a place to walk a dog in the middle of Manhattan, so I headed to the hotel's bell stand to look for some guidance. "Where can I find some grass around here?" I asked. The porter paused for a second, as he seemed to size me up. Then he replied: "Hey man, you're in the middle of Times Square. You can buy it from just about anyone out there." That was pretty funny. Dakota, I've a feeling we're not in Plano anymore, I thought. — Mike Lingenfelter

I say, they [those at the top] don't have to conspire, because they all think alike. The president of General Motors and the president of Chase Manhattan Bank really are not going to disagree much on anything, nor would the editor of the New York Times disagree with them. They all tend to think quite alike, otherwise they would not be in those jobs. — Gore Vidal

'Manhattan Love Story' has a very special place in my heart for many reasons. We were very sad to see it go. It brought me to New York, and there's nothing better than getting to go to work and fall for Analeigh Tipton every day. — Jake McDorman

I do think we need more cameras. We have to stay ahead of the terrorists, and I do know in New York, the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, which is based on cameras, the outstanding work that results from that. — Peter T. King

At least Manhattan, in terms of danger and eccentricity, is much more of a theme park now. You couldn't really shoot the old Law & Order in New York today. It's a different city. — Chris Noth

New York is a much more bourgeois city, more of a tourist attraction than a muscular metropolis. It's lost moxie and a rough energy, while gaining grace and friendliness. I love both versions of the city, but I wish the prosperous Manhattan would become a little easier for young people to afford. — Rafael Yglesias

Seeing New York in the movies is what made me want to live in Manhattan one day. I eventually got my wish, and the city has never disappointed me. — Robert Osborne

Give me such shows
give me the streets of Manhattan! — Walt Whitman

Diana's great-grandmother Frances Work, or Fanny, as she was known to her family, was an American, and perhaps that is why the Princess always felt such a great affinity for the land across the Atlantic. Fanny's father began his career as a clerk in Ohio and ended up making millions as a financial whiz in Manhattan. A great patriot, he promised to disinherit any of his offspring who married Europeans. But Fanny, like Diana a strong-willed woman, crossed the Atlantic and married British aristocrat James Boothby Burke Roche, who became the third Baron Fermoy. When the marriage broke up, she returned to New York with twin sons and a daughter, and her indulgent father forgave her. — Jayne Fincher

What people don't think about when they think about New York is this amazing farmland that grows wonderful fruits, vegetables, seafood, game, and fowl just outside of Manhattan. — Daniel Humm

Lo! body and soul!
this land! Mighty Manhattan, with spires, and The sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships; The varied and ample land,
the South And the North in the light
Ohio's shores, and flashing Missouri, And ever the far-spreading prairies, covered with grass and corn. — Walt Whitman

I never really even tried. But if I'm not a New York actress, what am I? I'm a person who takes a subway from the outer boroughs to lower Manhattan office every morning, who spends her days answering phones and doing copying, who is too disconsolate when she gets back to her apartment at night to do anything but sit on the couch and stare vacantly at reality TV shows until she falls asleep. Oh Godm it really was true, wasn't it? I really was a secretary. — Julie Powell

I live in New York City, and one day many years ago I was with a poet, Gregory Corso, walking through Greenwich Village. He pointed to a doorway in an alley that he said led to a tunnel under Manhattan, a tunnel he'd use to run from the cops. I started learning about old Prohibition-era speakeasy tunnels under the city, for running whiskey. — Ann Nocenti

Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus! Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me. — Walt Whitman

It seems that our politicians see the world in black and white, so why not our artists? Did Woody Allen's 'Manhattan' have to be in black and white? No. But is it fantastic that it was? To see New York like that? Yes! — Alexander Payne

After 9/11, I was like many people in New York City and got a little depressed. I began to check myself into The Waldorf Astoria for room service, movies and just to chill. I wanted to contribute to the great city of Manhattan. — Kristin Chenoweth

Manhattan is an accumulation of possible disasters that never happen. — Edward I. Koch

Movement was the essence of Manhattan. It had always been so, and now its sense of flow, energy, openness, elasticity as Charles Dickens had called it, was headier than ever. Half the city's skill and aspirations seemed to go into the propagation of motion. — Jan Morris

The thing about New York is, more than any other place I've ever been, you run into people on the street that you would never imagine you'd see, old friends, people just like there for a day or two. I find that all the time when I'm walking around Manhattan, running into people that I had no idea were even there. — Michael Shannon

I think it was the perfect gestation time for this particular piece [ Sounds Like Me: My Life (So Far) in Song]. One of the songs that I considered talking about was "Manhattan," because it was chronicling the end of a long relationship that was part of the reason why I moved from Los Angeles to New York, which was such a life-changing decision. I don't regret that it's not in there, but that's one that I considered diving into, and I have little piecemeal snippets of writing about that floating around — Sara Bareilles

It's a luxury being able to work every day in the streets of Manhattan. It doesn't get much cooler than that. When you move to New York, that's exactly what you dream of. And I'm doing it. — Kelli Giddish

My dad grew up in Washington Heights. I grew up in New York in Manhattan. So we're purebred New Yorkers. — Ansel Elgort

If one is looking for cultural testosterone and raging off-the-wall competition in the world of communications, Manhattan was - and is - home plate. — Brock Yates