Quotes & Sayings About New Yorkers

When a village ceases to be a community, it becomes oppressive in its narrow conformity. So one becomes an individual and migrates to the city. There, finding others like-minded, one re-establishes a village community. Nowadays only New Yorkers are yokels. — Paul Goodman

New York is Babylon : Brooklyn is the truly Holy City.
New York is the city of envy, office work, and hustle;
Brooklyn is the region of homes and happiness ... .
There is no hope for New Yorkers, for their glory in
Their skyscraping sins; but in Brooklyn there is the wisdom of the lowly. — Christopher Morley

Just after midnight, I text my parents who live in Florida: Please tell me you didn't help elect him.

No reply.

The next morning, New York City wakes up with a wet, gray yawn. The air is thick with mist. The city moves at a slower, muffled pace. New Yorkers rarely make eye contact; today isn't much different, except when eyes meet, they lock for a moment in shared grief. Everyone's shoulders bend forward, the world weighing heavier on them than it did yesterday.

The sidewalks and the coffee shops are quiet. Even the subway paces through its underground veins in somber silence. My husband tells me: "The city hasn't been this quiet since 9/11."

- Melissa Lirtsman — Erin Passons

So you got the cool New Yorkers, and then there are the less-than-cool New Yorkers. — Edward Burns

Look, we live in a very dangerous world. We know there are people who want to take away our freedoms. New Yorkers probably know that as much if not more than anybody else after the terrible tragedy of 9/11. — Michael Bloomberg

There are times I'm on the subway and it's so packed I can't escape the legs on my left and right. New Yorkers rage about this forced physical contact, but I secretly savor it, so soothed by the heat generated between bodies I could fall asleep on the shoulder of a stranger. — Jessica Knoll

From the point of view of physics, it is a miracle that [seven million New Yorkers are fed each day] without any control mechanism other than sheer capitalism. — John Henry Holland

I eat out three times a day most days of the year. This is no big deal to most New Yorkers, and it is not something I am necessarily proud of - it's simply the nature of my itinerant life. — Ben Elliot

There are a lot of New York City Thanksgiving traditions. For example, a lot of New Yorkers don't buy the frozen Thanksgiving turkey. They prefer to buy the bird live and then push it in front of a subway train. — David Letterman

New Yorkers are nice about giving you street directions; in fact, they seem quite proud of knowing where they are themselves. — Katharine Brush

And then there are the subway readers of difficult books. I like to imagine that New Yorkers are more literate than the riders of other American metropolises. — Sari Botton

I think of New Yorkers as not taking the time to talk to someone they don't know. — Carla Hall

The thing about our country, Americans, and New Yorkers in particular, we all want to help. There's real folks who want to help. The problem is, they don't know how. They don't know how to get involved. — Hill Harper

New Yorkers have their own way of speaking, their own tempo, and Texans are a lot like that. As much as you think Texas is one thing and New York is another, they're very much the same. — Jerry Jeff Walker

There is an inherent hope and positive drive to New Yorkers. — John Oliver

I'm just not gonna let up until I know I've done absolutely everything I can for New Yorkers. — Christine Quinn

So I said to myself-I'll paint what I see-what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking the time to look at it-I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers. — Georgia O'Keeffe

New Yorkers have real issues, and they deserve to have a mayor that is prepared to work with them to solve the challenges they have, reduce the problems that they have, and they deserve to have a mayor's race that is focused on them. — Christine Quinn

Larry Silverstein has betrayed the public's trust and that of all New Yorkers. — George Pataki

The reflexive allergy to L.A. that a lot of New Yorkers have, I feel like it's kind of nonsense. — Josh Radnor

There's that stigma about New Yorkers, how they're so mean, but in my experience it was quite the opposite. People were very genuine and very nice, even on the subway. — Taylor Kitsch

New Yorkers are born all over the country, and then they come to New York City and it hits them: Oh, that's who I am. — Delia Ephron

I was a make believe ethnographer: treating New Yorkers like an explorer would treat Zulus - searching for the rawest snapshot, the zero degree of photography. — William Klein

New Yorkers hustled past in every direction, somehow managing not to run smack into one another. A dozen scents hit her at once. Car exhaust, meat being grilled by a sidewalk vendor, and was that...a slight hint of urine? — Tessa Bailey

A release on September 16 quoted the claim of the assistant secretary for labor at OSHA that tests show 'it is safe for New Yorkers to go back to work in New York's financial district.' (OSHA's responsibility extends only to indoor air quality for workers, however.) — National Commission On Terrorist Attacks Upon The United States

Anybody that I can work with that will help improve the lives of New Yorkers, I will work with that person. — Christine Quinn

Man with goatee. Man who looked like a Beatle. All the Beatles at once. Woman wearing newspaper hat. I'd grown used to how weird New Yorkers were, and I could fit them into types. — Olivia Sudjic

I love the honesty of New Yorkers. When a New Yorker says 'let's do lunch,' they actually mean it. In L.A., when they say 'let's do lunch,' they're just trying to say good-bye. — Sherri Shepherd

As I walked down the street while talking on the phone, sophisticated New Yorkers gaped at the sight of someone actually moving around while making a phone call. Remember that in 1973, there weren't cordless telephones, let alone cellular phones. I made numerous calls, including one where I crossed the street while talking to a New York radio reporter - probably one of the more dangerous things I have ever done in my life. — Martin Cooper

My message for New Yorkers is prepare for something worse than we have ever seen before. — Anonymous

New Yorkers may think they're on some cutting edge, but that's not especially true. It is, however, the most exciting heterogeneous mess of a town I've ever seen. — Carter Burwell

New Yorkers stop me on the street all the time to say, 'You're terrific! You're the nuts!' — Elaine Stritch

These are tough times, and the New Yorkers I have met are facing economic adversity with grace and dignity. They worry about their future, care about their neighbors and hope this storm will pass so they can focus on better days ahead. — Harold Ford Jr.

The contrasts between what is spent today to educate a child in the poorest New York City neighborhoods, where teacher salaries are often even lower than the city averages, and spending levels in the wealthiest suburban areas are daunting challenges to any hope New Yorkers might retain that even semblances of fairness still prevail. — Jonathan Kozol

New York is the perfect place for a film festival because there's already so much energy and life here, and New Yorkers love movies. — Clark Gregg

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

Every writer at the New Yorker is smarter than me. — Bob Dylan

I know that many Irish-born New Yorkers are caught in the trap of our federal immigration policies. If we are going to continue to attract the best and the brightest - and Ireland has more than its fair share - we need to inject some common sense into our immigration laws, and I'm doing my best to make that case in Washington. — Michael Bloomberg

When people endure a traumatic event, they are either defeated or made stronger. On Sept. 11, I told New Yorkers, 'I want you to emerge stronger from this.' My words were partially a hope and partially an observation that people in New York City handle big things better than little things. I could not be more proud of the way my city responded. — Rudy Giuliani

I'm always pointing things out to native New Yorkers that I think are weird about this place and their culture and all that. But I feel like my friends and family from California feel like I've totally "become a New Yorker." — Adrian Tomine

It was an incredible resource. I'd sit with a big stack of bound New Yorkers in the library and read through, especially the 'Talk of the Town' sections. — Michael Chabon

People say New Yorkers can't get along. Not true. I saw two New Yorkers, complete strangers, sharing a cab. One guy took the tires and the radio; the other guy took the engine. — David Letterman

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

New Yorkers only cross water for visual culture if the water is an ocean. The East River throws us for a huge loop. If we started going to Queens and the Bronx for visual culture, many of our rent, space, and crowding problems would be over indefinitely. — Jerry Saltz

As Elizabeth Blackmar and Ray Rosenzweig wrote in their magisterial history of [Central Park in NYC]: 'The issue of demoncratic access to the park has also been raised by the increasing number of homeless New Yorkers. Poor people
from the 'squatters' of the 1850s to the 'tramps' of the 1870s and 1890s to the Hooverville residents of the 1930s
have always turned to the park land for shelter ... The growing visibility of homeless people in Central Park osed in the starkest terms the contradiction between Americans' commitment to democratic space and their acquiescence in vast disparities of wealth and power. — Rebecca Solnit

My dream is not Hollywood, but to perform my act in English to 30 people in a Soho comedy club, to show New Yorkers what they look like from the French point of view. — Gad Elmaleh

I'm a Tennessean at heart, and a New Yorker in spirit. — Rachel Boston

People often mistake New Yorkers for rude and mean, but they're really just no-nonsense and efficient. They don't have time, regularly, to be warm and friendly with everyone who crosses their path. Nothing would ever get done. But when the chips are down, when it matters, they drop their cool exteriors and become unabashedly human. — Sari Botton

The World Trade Center site will forever hold a special place in our city, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans if we said no to a mosque in lower Manhattan. — Michael Bloomberg

New Yorkers like to boast that if you can survive in New York, you can survive anywhere. But if you can survive anywhere, why live in New York? — Edward Abbey

The language spoken by New Yorkers was changing almost daily. Phrases culled from British thieves' cant intermingled with German, Dutch, Yiddish, and other immigrant languages to form "flash," a — Lyndsay Faye

After the 9/11 apocalypse happened in New York City, people, particularly New Yorkers, who breathed in the ash, or saw the results of that, have a tendency to keep seeing echoes and having flashbacks to it. — Stephen King

Yet, as only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you'll live through the night. — Dorothy Parker

New Yorkers are stuck in a gloomy mucilage of mutual commiseration. — Herb Caen

The NYPD has too urgent a mission and too few officers for us to waste time and resources on broad, unfocused surveillance. We have a responsibility to protect New Yorkers from violent crime or another terrorist attack - and we uphold the law in doing so. — Raymond Kelly

New Yorkers have this special spot in Central Park, where they do this 5K run, the minute the clock strikes twelve. I ran once, and I'll never do that again, either. But, it's awesome to watch those people run. It's such a great environment and place to be. — Hilary Swank

What he needed Gorham to understand - what his son was heir to - the thing that really mattered - was the New Yorkers indomitable spirit — Edward Rutherfurd

I know one of the secrets the rest of the country hasn't figured out yet: it's not New Yorkers who are rude, it's the tourists who've seen a movie about rude New Yorkers and think they have to act the same way when they come to New York who are rude. — Sari Botton

We named the bar The Bar. "People will think we're ironic instead of creatively bankrupt," my sister reasoned.
Yes, we thought we were being clever New Yorkers - that the name was a joke no one else would really get, like we did. Not meta-get ... But our first customer, a gray-haired woman in bifocals and a pink jogging suit, said, "I like the name. Like in Breakfast at Tiffany's and Audrey Hepburn's cat was named Cat. — Gillian Flynn

Never mind gas masks and fallout shelters in the event of biological warfare. Many New Yorkers move from place to place equipped with the essentials of vermin assault weaponry: mouse traps, roach spray, and sticky tapes. In some neighborhoods, it's a must. — Isabel Lopez

New Yorkers are mostly interested in New York - in case you haven't noticed. — Jim Harrison

People in London think of London as the center of the world, whereas New Yorkers think the world ends three miles outside of Manhattan. — Toby Young

Fair and affordable housing is a basic right for all New Yorkers and all Americans. — Nydia Velazquez

Hip hop started in NY so it's important that New Yorkers realise that to talk about NY music and its sound should not be a small-minded conversation. Music is supposed to evolve. It's supposed to be going through changes, it's not supposed to sound exactly the same as what it did when it started. NY hip hop has to be allowed to move on and grow and expand. — Nas

By comparison with other less hectic days, the city is uncomfortable and inconvenient; but New Yorkers temperamentally do not crave comfort and convenience- if they did they would live elsewhere. — E.B. White

For a Bostonian ... we live in the shadow of New York, and to be acknowledged by New Yorkers is really the greatest feeling. — Donnie Wahlberg

A lot of people have told me real New Yorkers are Mets fans — Curtis Granderson

His laugh and his voice were both pleasant. He talked the way New Yorkers used to talk before they learned to talk Flatbush. — Raymond Chandler

As one of the voices of rural New Yorkers in Congress, I am committed to supporting efforts such as these that will make a real impact in people's lives. — John M. McHugh

The main thing I like about New Yorkers is that they understand that their lives are a relentless circus of horrors, ending in death. As New Yorkers, we realize this, we resign ourselves to our fate, and we make sure that everyone else is as miserable as we are. Good town. — Kyle Baker

New Yorkers your voices must be heard. Tell your state Congressmen to support same sex marriage bill. All you need is love — Madonna Ciccone

Why, I've seen Kentuckians who hated whiskey, Virginians who weren't descended from Pocahontas, Indianians who hadn't written a novel, Mexicans who didn't wear velvet trousers with silver dollars sewed along the seams, funny Englishmen, spendthrift Yankees, cold-blooded Southerners, narrow- minded Westerners, and New Yorkers who were too busy to stop for an hour on the street to watch a one-armed grocer's clerk do up cranberries in paper bags. Let a man be a man and don't handicap him with the label of any section. — O. Henry

[Speaking to a group of wealthy New Yorkers]
A million years ago, the cave man, without tools, with small brain, and with nothing but the strength of his body, managed to feed his wife and children, so that through him the race survived. You on the other hand, armed with all the modern means of production, multiplying the productive capacity of the cave man a million times - you are incompetents and muddlers, you are unable to secure to millions even the paltry amount of bread that would sustain their physical life. You have mismanaged the world, and it shall be taken from you. — Jack London

What's so fascinating about New Yorkers is that each person has a whole lexicon of personal logic in the way that they decipher and do what has to be done to enjoy, stay alive, take pleasure in this place. — Spalding Gray

New Yorkers, by reputation, are fast-talking, assertive and easily annoyed; I fit right in. — Jane Pauley

My parents were New Yorkers, and I was conceived in Los Angeles. My father was a makeup artist to Clint Eastwood and Richard Chamberlain. — Michele Lee

If you aren't born here, to be a real New Yorker, you have to bring your talent, be a successful mentor, and support the New Yorkers who made the city by giving back. — Daniel Boulud

As most New Yorkers have done, I have given serious and generous thought to the state of my apartment should I get killed during the day. — Sloane Crosley

I've spent a great deal of time over the past decade as a caregiver for various family members. It gives me a perspective on the struggles that many New Yorkers face with illness, disability, health care, insurance difficulties, and trying to work with and also take care of family members. — Wendy E. Long

The unspoken truth was that New Yorkers considered everyone in the world to be just a tad - well, more than just a tad, a lot more than a tad - old-fashioned compared with themselves. — Lynn Cullen

In the summer New York was the only place in which one could escape from New Yorkers ... — Edith Wharton

The expansion of tobacco cessation centers is an important part of our historic and continuing effort to help smokers quit. The expansion of these centers will give even more New Yorkers the help they need to quit once and for all. — George Pataki

Once they are charged, too many poor New Yorkers find themselves trapped by our unjust bail system. Unable to pay for bail, they languish in Rikers Island or other jails while they await trial, regardless of guilt. — Eric Schneiderman

After the tragedy, New Yorkers are more united than ever in their vision, as well as in appreciation what living in freedom means - and that if we stand together, we can accomplish anything. — George Pataki

I think that most New Yorkers would object to calling me a New Yorker. I didn't grow up here. — Sloane Crosley

I love all the different ways that New Yorkers show their individuality through what they choose to wear. — Henrik Lundqvist

Congressmember Weiner has shown just a pattern of reckless behavior, an inability to tell the truth, and what New Yorkers deserve is a mayor with a record of delivering for them, of vision, and a level of maturity and responsibility. — Christine Quinn

New York's the place where you can have a private life. You can do anything, be anything you please. New Yorkers mind their own business. Police cars, ambulances, fire engines - nobody even turns around for them. We go to the movies for excitement. — Zelda Popkin

Before I opened my computer in the parking lot today, I relived one of my favorite memories. It's the one with Woody and me sitting on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum after it's closed. We're watching people parade out of the museum in summer shorts and sandals. The trees to the south are planted in parallel lines. The water in the fountain shoots up with a mist that almost reaches the steps we sit on. We look at silver-haired ladies in red-and-white-print dresses. We separate the mice from the men, the tourists from the New Yorkers, the Upper East Siders from the West Siders. The hot-pretzel vendor sells us a wad of dough in knots with clumps of salt stuck on top. We make our usual remarks about the crazies and wonder what it would be like to live in a penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue overlooking the Met. We laugh and say the same things we always say. We hold hands and keep sitting, just sitting, as the sun beings to set. It's a perfect afternoon. — Diane Keaton

More than 150 heads of state attended the UN Summit, giving New Yorkers a chance to get in touch with prejudices they didn't even know they had. — Jon Stewart

I have a bold plan to break from the Bloomberg years, and end the 'Tale of Two Cities' by providing real opportunity to all New Yorkers, no matter where they live. — Bill De Blasio

New Yorkers have been fortunate to have Andrew Cuomo as our Attorney General - protecting working New Yorkers against the banks, insurance companies and big corporations. — Eric Schneiderman

Free is not how many of our citizens feel - with our overstocked medicine cabinets, burglar alarms, vast ghettos, and drug culture. Eighteen hundred New Yorkers are murdered every year by their fellow citizens in a city whose police department is larger than the standing army of many nations. The adventure went sour. — Stanley Hauerwas

There were a few nighttime pedestrians on the block, but they continued on their way, dutifully ignoring the zombie vomiting blood out of the back of my car. Good old New Yorkers. They really couldn't care less. — Nicholas Kaufmann

New Yorkers, I figured, just pretended to be unfriendly. — Jeannette Walls

The most divisive issue facing New Yorkers in 2013 is stop and frisk, a tactic used by law enforcement to stop, question, and frisk people suspected of a crime. — Sal Albanese

west. He liked the mild climate, the Sierras making it something like Colorado with a seashore. It took him several years to overcome the natural though secret belief of true New Yorkers, that people living somewhere else had to be, in some sense, kidding. — Gregory Benford

I may be one of the last New Yorkers who actually drives in the city daily. — Donald Trump Jr.

You can get the true essence of New Yorkers by just hanging out in Central Park. — Andy Roddick

On the 11th anniversary of 9/11, it is some consolation that the man most responsible for that terrible morning will not be smiling smugly to himself as satellite TV brings to the leafy boulevards of Abbottabad the somber images of New Yorkers commemorating those who perished in the Twin Towers. — Bobby Ghosh