Quotes & Sayings About New York City

Though I work in New York City, in an office about a mile from the World Trade Center, I was not in New York City when the planes struck. I was on a plane above the Atlantic Ocean, heading back to New York from a family reunion and celebration in Europe. I had said good-bye to my husband in London; he was staying for a wedding of a business friend. I couldn't wait to see my kids and my parents, who would be waiting for me at a Little League game in our town, about thirty-five miles from New York City. An hour and a half into the flight, I suddenly had the feeling that the plane was making a slow turn. Nobody else seemed to notice. I sat nervously, hoping I was imagining it. But then a stewardess made an announcement. "There has been a catastrophic event affecting all of North American airspace," she said. "We are returning — Lauren Tarshis

New York City has finally hired women to pick up the garbage, which makes sense to me, since, as I've discovered, a good bit of being a woman consists of picking up garbage. — Anna Quindlen

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

I remember my own life as a small boy, son of Jewish immigrants, in a janitor's flat on Orchard and Stanton streets on the Lower East Side of New York City. My father made pants and doubled as janitor of a tenement - before he made janitoring at $30 a month, plus rooms, a career. — Jacob K. Javits

More people are killed by errant cabdrivers in New York City every year than are killed by NYPD cops - and — Charles Campisi

I don't think any other city in the world ... the sun doesn't shine the same way anywhere as it does in New York. And then I guess everyone's very good at hanging out. Not in a crazy way, but you're just constantly interacting and learning. — Ben Lovett

People go to LA to "find themselves", they come to New York to become someone new. — Lindsey Kelk

New York may end up being no more than a scrim, a spectral film that is none other than our craving for romance - romance with life, with masonry, with memory, sometimes romance with nothing at all. This longing goes out to the city and from the city comes back to us. Call it narcissism. Or call it passion. It has its flare-ups, its cold nights, its sudden lurches, and its embraces. It is our life finally revealed to us in the most lifeless hard objects we'll ever cast eyes on: concrete, steel, stonework. Our need for intimacy and love is so powerful that we'll look for them and find them in asphalt and soot. — Andre Aciman

I climbed aboard a Greyhound bus and rode it to New York without telling anyone, without so much as a goodbye. What was I thinking? I wasn't. I was young and stupid and broken. I knew from watching movies that broken people hopped on buses and disappeared. New York seemed far away, geographically, mentally. — Ken Wheaton

A friend told me about the casting notice for 'Queer Eye.' I was in Chicago and I had a contract with 'Esquire' magazine, so had been coming to New York City regularly and thought I'd catch a cheap flight, crash on a friend's sofa and do this hilarious audition that I had no chance of winning. — Ted Allen

Everyone has their own New York in the heart, place where there is hope for everybody. — T.A

I go to see plays all the time, and whenever I see Chekhov, I'm amazed at how this Russian play strikes home to me living 100 years later in New York City. I'm drawn to him because of his way with characters and their relationships with each other. — Neil Simon

New York is an egotist. It will suffer no divided attention. "Look at me!" says the voice of the city imperiously, and its children obey. It snatches their thoughts from their inner griefs, and concentrates them on the pageant that rolls unceasingly from one end of the island to the other. One may despair in New York, but it is difficult to brood on the past; for New York is the City of the Present, the City of Things that are Going On. — P.G. Wodehouse

Some three or four years before this Dr. Sloper had moved his household gods up town, as they say in New York. He had been living ever since his marriage in an edifice of red brick, with granite copings and an enormous fanlight over the door, standing in a street within five minutes' walk of the City Hall, which saw its best days (from the social point of view) about 1820. After this, the tide of fashion began to set steadily northward, as, indeed, in New York, thanks to the narrow channel in which it flows, it is obliged to do, and the great hum of traffic rolled farther to the right and left of Broadway. — Henry James

We played this game from the west village to the upper east side til around midnight when the Chrysler building was far behind us and we weren't sure if we were in love anymore. — Darnell Lamont Walker

My two Jamaican cousins ... were studying engineering. 'That's where the money is,' Mom advised ... I was to be an engineering major, despite my allergy to science and math ... Those who preceded me at CCNY include the polio vaccine discoverer, Dr. Jonas Salk ... and eight Nobel Prize winners ... In class, I stumbled through math, fumbled through physics, and did reasonably well in, and even enjoyed, geology. All I ever looked forward to was ROTC.
Autobiographical comments on his original reason for going to the City College of New York, where he shortly turned to his military career. — Colin Powell

When I came to America, there was a lot of decadence in New York in the early '70s because the city was bankrupt and you could do whatever you want! — Maripol

I love you because
Five floor walk up
1 to the 2 to the E
Three avenues — Darnell Lamont Walker

That air of electric tension, of a great city on the edge of an abyss, is more noticeable than ever at the White Russian cabaret called, not inappropriately, "New York." You wouldn't know you were in China. An almond-eyed platinum-blonde has just finished wailing, with a Mott Street accent, "You're gonna lose your gal." ("Jane Brown's Body") — Cornell Woolrich

We are growing from a cheerful small town where everyone waves off their front porch to the subway of New York City where everyone rushes by. How do you preserve the culture that has worked so well? — Jimmy Wales

I feel like kids that grew up in New York City or in L.A. were exposed to all these subcultures and subgenres, whereas I was only exposed to the poppiest of pop music so I never had this negative connotation towards pop music. That's not South African music having an effect on me, but just how international music was filtered through South Africa affected me. It gave me a not-negative connotation towards pop music growing up. — St. Lucia

I had traveled eight thousand miles around the American continent and I was back on Times Square; and right in the middle of a rush hour, too, seeing with my innocent road-eyes the absolute madness and fantastic hoorair of New York with its millions and millions hustling forever for a buck among themselves, the mad dream-grabbing, taking, giving, sighing, dying, just so they could be buried in those awful cemetery cities beyond Long Island City. — Jack Kerouac

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

There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter - the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something.
... Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. — E.B. White

In matters outside the courtroom, courts have decried differential treatment between print and broadcast media. New York City mayoral candidates Mario Cuomo and Edward Koch tried to exclude selected members of the media in 1977 by limiting access to their campaign headquarters to those who had received invitations. Ruling in American Broadcasting Cos. v. Cuomo, a federal court observed, "once there is a public function, public comment, and participation by some of the media, the First Amendment requires equal access to all of the media or the rights of the First Amendment would no longer be tenable."44
In 1981, a federal court in Georgia struck down a judge's order excluding television crews from a White House press pool. The court said the order violated the press and public's First Amendment right of access to White House events. It felt television coverage "provides a comprehensive visual element and an immediacy, or simultaneous aspect, not found in print — Marjorie Cohn

New York is such a special place. It's really intense for people because they live here when they're young. On top of the energy of the city there's a visceral experience a lot of people have because it's a time in their lives where they're just absorbing a lot. Things take on a significance that they might not otherwise. — Meghan Daum

She had to get used to her new name, The Drummer. Twelfth, and last in line, but on a good note, she had the most money, and more importantly, she was alive. — Dayna S. Rubin

I had a good friend in New York City. — Hank Williams Jr.

I'd been coming to New York for weekends since I was 17, and after 9/11, I started making these trips more frequently, just to make contact with the city. — Garth Risk Hallberg

College is a safe space where it can be hard to truly fail. The institution is rooting for you because your failure makes them look bad, too. New York City has no such mandate. I've had to hone and sharpen and refine my work here at a pace which may not have happened in other cities. — Baratunde Thurston

I was a monster. I don't deny it. I wasn't a monster until a few years ago. But you have to be a monster to survive in New York City. New York City doesn't give a damn about violence. — Bernhard Goetz

Being born in New York City, tends to lead to big expectations, expectations that I only started to realize after I had left. — Joseph Pisani

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

I been a wanderin'
Early and late,
New York City
To the Golden Gate
An' it looks like
I'm never gonna cease my
Wanderin'. — Carl Sandburg

The pulse of New York City can be found on the bent elbows of the patrons in Pete's Tavern. — Mickey Wyte

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

While America will always, I think, feel foreign to me, New York City is my home. This is where I can construct my own identity freely and reject labels imposed on me. — Raquel Cepeda

The planet earth is a sub-world, way below what's average, because if an enlightened being walked through New York City today, no one would see him or her. They wouldn't see the glow. — Frederick Lenz

New York City is my playground. — Bethenny Frankel

I've probably saved more black lives as mayor of New York City than any mayor in New York City with the possible exception of Mike Bloomberg, who was there for 12 years. — Rudy Giuliani

My piece in One World or None was the description of the effect of a single atomic bomb on New York City. — Philip Morrison

According to the 2003 data from the U.S. Census Bureau, 25.8 percent of [New Orleans] population lives below the poverty line ... This is more than twice the national average, but is close tot he percentages in other American cities such as Miami (28.5), Los Angeles (22.1), Atlanta (24.4), and New York City (21.2). — Billy Sothern

It was October 2001 and I lived in New York City. I was twenty-two. I, like many of my female friends, suffered from a strange combination of post-9/11 anxiety and height-of-Sex-and-the-City anxiety. They are distinct and unnerving anxieties. The questions that ran through my mind went something like this: Should I keep a gas mask in my kitchen? Am I supposed to be able to afford Manolo Blahnik shoes? What is Barneys New York? You're trying to tell me a place called "Barneys" is fancy? Where are the fabulous gay friends I was promised? Gay guys hate me! Is this anthrax or powdered sugar? Help! Help! — Mindy Kaling

The near-term attacks ... will either rival or exceed the 9/11 attacks ... And it's pretty clear that the nation's capital and New York city would be on any list ... — Tom Ridge

The idea (for the painting 'Room in New York', 1932, ed.) had been in my mind a long time before I painted it. It was suggested by glimpses of lighted interiors seen as I walked along city streets at night, probably near the district where I live (Washington Square, New York, fh) although it's no particular street or house, but is really a synthesis of many impressions. — Edward Hopper

As far as being a Republican is concerned, I come from a place, New York City, which is virtually, I mean, it is almost exclusively Democrat. And I have really started to see some of the negatives - as an example, and I have a lot of liking for this man, but the last number of months of his brother's administration were a catastrophe. And unfortunately, those few months gave us President Obama. And you can't be happy about that. — Donald Trump

Since Deacon Hollingshead's arrival in town last July the Dominion had been hard at work, cleansing New York City of moral corruption. "Corruption" is a popular word with the enthusiasts of the Dominion, usually uttered as a prelude to the knife, the docket, or the noose. — Robert Charles Wilson

No, what one wanted, really, was the city or anyone in it to see how one suffered. Of course, this being New York, they'd likely just tell him Get over it . . . Was it possible that the last month had been a kind of judgement on him for ever daring to pretend that anything meant anything at all? — Garth Risk Hallberg

New York is the only city that I have ever lived in that I have felt at home. — Edi Gathegi

A year earlier my parents had moved us out of the city to a split-level on Long Island, their idea of the American dream, which meant it as now an hour-and-a-half commute via the 7:06 Hicksville to Penn Station every morning. (Dark City Lights) — Jonathan Santlofer

New York is a sucked orange. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

New York! I've always wanted to see it and now I've see it. It's true what they say
it's the most wonderful city in the world. — Betty Smith

We have still not answered the question of when an experiment might be justifiable. It will not do to say "Never!" Putting morality in such black-and-white terms is appealing, because it eliminates the need to think about particular cases; but in extreme circumstances, such absolutist answers always break down. Torturing a human being is almost always wrong, but it is not absolutely wrong. If torture were the only way in which we could discover the location of a nuclear bomb hidden in a New York City basement and timed to go off within the hour, then torture would be justifiable. — Peter Singer

No matter how many strikes are hurled at you, only you decide when you're out. — Gina Greenlee

There is nothing Tourettic about the New York City subways. — Jonathan Lethem

And yet how treacherous, I thought, after such neutrality, bordering on indifference, and occaisonally open hostility, when the whole city finally seemed alive and tremulous to my touch, a seething structure reaching out to meet me and accommodate my every move, as if I had been expected and was welcome there, that she was the only thing in it that would not respond. — Olivia Sudjic

During the years I was on the board of directors of the National Organization for Women [chapter] in New York City, the most resistant audiences I ever faced in the process of doing corporate workshops on equality in the workplace were not male executives they were the wives of male executives. As long as her income came from her husband, she was not feeling generous when affirmative action let another woman have a head start vying for her husband's (her) income. — Warren Farrell

She had the most beautiful awkwardness — Brandon Stanton

New York. Truly, this is the only city that I feel this energy. Everyone is accepted. This is the first place that I felt open and that I can do everything. — Elie Tahari

Kvetching means complaining, and complaining is really what will forever keep New York the city it is. — Sari Botton

Apparently, the Obamas chose New York City because they've gotten so used to people trying to break into their house. — Jimmy Fallon

I would like to live in New York - it is my favourite city; I love it. — Mollie King

Let the park live in you until it sings you a song. — Zack Love

I live in New York City, but I live in Hoboken because it's cheaper there, and I can own a condo. — Katie Nolan

We had almost exactly a year together as a couple after that. She wanted to swim the Great Barrier Reef. I wish we had gone. I wish we had read books to each other. We had one weekend of sexy-times in New York City while her father looked after the kids. I wish we'd had more. I wish we'd walked more. I wish we hadn't sat in front of the TV so much. It was nice, we cuddled, we laughed at Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers, but it didn't make much in the way of memories. We did such ordinary, banal things. Ordered pizza and played Trivial Pursuit with her sister and her dad. Helped the kids with homework. We did dishes together more than we ever made love. What kind of life is that?"
"Real life," Harper said. — Joe Hill

One of the big luxuries of being in Antwerp is that I can easily walk in the city. In Paris and New York, I am more recognized. — Dries Van Noten

When I came to this country in America which was in New York City which is crowd-est place in the world first thing I saw; people walking literally constantly back and forth and then first thing went through my mind a question like 'why are this people walking around like zombies' seriously people in America specially New York people are dead walking meaning by this that people are 'off' from reality. — Nadair Desmar

I loved the High Line when it was just mine, when I was the only person up there, and I had a private park in New York City. I had to make an appointment to see it ... I'd walk around. I was all alone. — Joel Sternfeld

In a city of twenty million like New York, there might be one or two terrorists. Maybe ten of them at the outside. 10/20,000,000 = 0.00005 percent. One twenty-thousandth of a percent. That's pretty rare all right. Now, say you've got some software that can sift through all the bank records, or toll pass records, or public transit records, or phone call records in the city and catch terrorists 99 percent of the time. In a pool of twenty million people, a 99 percent accurate test will identify two hundred thousand people as being terrorists. But only ten of them are terrorists. To catch ten bad guys, you have to haul in and investigate two hundred thousand innocent people. — Cory Doctorow

I live in New York, and I love New York as well, but I think Los Angeles is a place where if you have the right person with you, there are all these little worlds that you would never guess by just looking at the exterior of what the city is. — Greta Gerwig

Around New York City, samples collected at dozens of beaches or piers have detected the types of bacteria and other pollutants tied to sewage overflows. Though the city's drinking water comes from upstate reservoirs, environmentalists say untreated excrement and other waste in the city's waterways pose serious health risks. — Charles Duhigg

The ultimate test of a great team is results. And considering that tens of thousands of people escaped from the World Trade Center towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., there can be no doubt that the teams who risked, and lost, their lives to save them were extraordinary. — Patrick Lencioni

There is a city beneath the streets — Robert E. Sullivan Jr.

Sidney Lumet's chief preoccupation wasn't art. It was right and wrong in the American city, nearly always in New York. — Wesley Morris

I do not go outdoors ... As far as I'm concerned, the whole point of living in New York City is indoors. You want greenery? Order the spinach. — David Rakoff

The warm humid air of New York clung to the night, unwilling to relinquish its suffocating hold. And yet to Eva, the city had an underlying hum of possibility; a constant forward motion that promised, no matter what, that change was on its way. — Kathleen Tessaro

I was a waitress years ago when I was first trying to become an actress, waiting tables in New York City. — Kim Dickens

My father emigrated from Lithuania to the United States at the age of 12. He received his higher education in New York City and graduated in 1914 from the New York University School of Dentistry. My mother came at the age of 14 from a part of Russia which, after the war, became Poland; she was only 19 when she was married to my father. — Gertrude B. Elion

New York City isn't Chuck E. Cheese. We don't have ball pits for the kids to play in. We have titty bars and crack. — Jon Stewart

I am coming back to New York after five years, and it seems that psychics are taking over the city. — Aravind Adiga

In a VR setting, you tilt your head up, and you really have the vertigo and the sense that it goes up to infinity, and it's like you're in New York City or Dubai, and you're looking up at a giant skyscraper. You have a sense of awe. — Ramez Naam

A report released by the Partnership for a New American Economy and the Partnership for New York City predicts that by 2018, there will be 800,000 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) jobs in the United States that require a master's degree or higher - and only around 550,000 American-graduates with this training. — Marvin Ammori

I just would like to spend more time in New York City. — Scott Speedman

I don't think the isolation of the American writer is a tradition; it's more that, geographically, he just is isolated, unless he happens to live in New York City. But I don't suppose there's a small town around the country that doesn't have a writer. — Nelson Algren

History is finite-there's only so much you can learn about a six square block historic district in New York City. (Dark City Lights) — Kat Georges

My parents were born and brought up in New York City. My father was trained as an electrical engineer, and my mother was an elementary school teacher. They were the children of Jewish immigrants who had come to the United States from England and Lithuania in the late 1800s. — David Lee

Central Park is the grandiose symbol of the front yard each child in New York hasn't got. — Robert Benchley

When you're in New York City or Los Angeles, even if you're not dealing with show business, there's still this sense that it's the center of the universe. And I think that's a really dangerous, limiting mindset. — Ed Helms

WHAT CAN YOU SPEND BUT YOU CAN NEVER GET BACK????
TIME!
CHOOSE HOW YOU SPEND YOUR TIME AND WHO YOU SPEND IT WITH WISELY. — Qwana M. BabyGirl Reynolds-Frasier

New York City is one of the greatest places on the planet. You have the best in food, art, theatre, and definitely people-watching. — Matt Bomer

Shocked to learn of the serious attacks against certain areas in New York City and Washington D.C. on September 11, which caused horrendous casualty, I wish to express, on behalf of the Chinese Government and people, our deepest sympathy and solicitude to you and, through you, to the Government and people of the United States. I wish also to extend our condolences to the families of the victims. The Chinese Government has consistently condemned and rejected all forms of terrorist violence. — Jiang Zemin

He wanted most of all the people of his own mind, people with whom he could really talk, people he could harangue and scold by the hour, servants, you see, to his fancy. Among these people he was always self-confident and bold. They might talk, to be sure, and even have opinions of their own, but always he talked last and best. He was like a writer busy among the figures of his brain, a kind of tiny blue-eyed king he was, in a six-dollar room facing Washington Square in the city of New York. — Sherwood Anderson

Waiting for a hot pocket to cook we'd fuck and be satisfied, barefoot on new york city apartment linoleum. A satisfying hot pocket and a big ass smile and a tight ass grip and a wall beside a random pipe beside the stove where we left palm and dick prints. We fucked like this. Three condoms in an hour and a half and where are you now? Holding the hand of some local dude you wish was a little more international, wishing you had known I was enough and asked me to stay. You are standing in the kitchen waiting for popcorn to pop while he washes dishes, not knowing I'm wishing back for you. — Darnell Lamont Walker

My opportunity to design school choice systems began in 2003 with a phone call from Jeremy Lack at the New York City Department of Education. He knew of my work on the medical match and wondered if similar efforts might help reorganize the dysfunctional, congested system then used to match students to high schools. — Alvin E. Roth

In New York City we have the biggest police force in the country. We have 35,000 uniformed officers. We're able to mass officers in significant numbers if we had to. — Raymond Kelly

And the most unusual and surrealistic place in New York City is Central Park. — Christo

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

I stayed in L.A. long enough to get on my feet, and then I moved back to New York. The reason I moved here was that I don't feel warm outside of a city; it's too barren in the suburbs, and L.A. is a suburb. Here, it felt active. — Iggy Pop

Someone did a study of the three most-often-heard phrases in New York City. One is "Hey taxi." Two is "What train do I take to get to Bloomingdales?" And three is "Don't worry, it's only a flesh wound. — David Letterman

I lived in New York City for a while and miss it like it's a person. Although I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, I'm a New Yorker at heart. A stroll through Central Park, a visit to the MET, a show on Broadway. There is no other city like it in the world! — Zoe McLellan