Quotes & Sayings About Times Square

Paige, the way you just stood up and left like that, I was awful proud of you. Really, you're stronger than you let on." She sighed. "I should've stood up and left sooner. I was real close." "Me, too," he said. "I think maybe we tried too hard with Bud. Both of us. He always act like that?" "When he's not real quiet and sulky." "He get along with Wes okay?" Preacher asked. "Bud thinks Wes is awesome. Because he thinks Wes is rich. Wes thinks Bud's an idiot." "Hmm." Preacher contemplated. He didn't let go of her hand. "You think Bud really believes it would be all right to get your head bashed in a few times a year for six thousand square feet and a pool?" "I believe he does," she said. "I really believe he does." "Hmm. Think he'd like to move into my big house - test that theory?" She laughed. "Do you have a big house somewhere, John?" "Not at the moment." He shrugged. "But for Bud, I'd be willing to look around." * — Robyn Carr

Times Square, where Broadway crosses 7th Avenue, is known as the crossroads of the world. Millions — F.P. Lione

Even souvenir seekers. One of the worst contaminants was fellow officers, especially brass grandstanding if reporters were present and eager to grab a video bite to slap on the twenty-four-hour news cycle. One more glance at the circular coffin. Okay, Amelia Sachs thought: Knuckle time ... A phrase of her father's. The man had also been cop, a beat patrolman working the Deuce - Midtown South; back then Times Square was like Deadwood in the 1800s. "Knuckle time" referred to those moments when you have to go up against your worst fears. Breadbasket ... Sachs returned to the access door and climbed through it and down into the utility room below the cellar. Then she took the evidence collection gear bag from the other officer. Sachs said, "You search the basement, Jean?" "I'll do it now," Eagleston said. "And then get everything into the RRV." They'd done a fast examination of the cellar. But it was apparent that the perp had spent minimal time there. He'd grabbed Chloe, subdued — Jeffery Deaver

I smile. "Mr. Perfect Beautiful Hockey God?"

"Oh, shut up. You know it's true," she replies in a flat tone. "You should be the face of the NHL. They should put you on billboards in Times Square. You're hot and your charm levels are through the roof. — Victoria Denault

Last night I walked clear down to Times Square & just as I arrived I suddenly realized I was a ghost - it was my ghost walking on the sidewalk. — Jack Kerouac

The Zocalo is a magnificent space, at least four times the size of Trafalagar Square, with the National Palace on one side, the huge cathedral on the other, and in one corner part of the old Aztec City so brutally destroyed by Hernan Cortez and the Conquistadores. — Jeremy Corbyn

I kind of miss the old sleazy Times Square, in a way. And yet I don't mind not being accosted by all sorts of strange people. — Malachy McCourt

[Wind energy] takes a very large footprint on the land, five to 10 times what you'd use for nuclear, and typically to get one gigawatt of electricity is on the order of 250 square miles of wind farm. — Stewart Brand

Alec?" Magnus was staring at him. He had dispatched the remaining Iblis demons, and the square was empty but for the two of them. "Did you just- did you just save my life?"
Alec knew he ought to say something like, Of course, because I'm a Shadowhunter and that's what we do, or That's my job. Jace would have said something like that. Jace always knew the right thing to say. But the words that actually came out of Alec's mouth where quite different- and sounded petulant, even to his own ears. "You never called me back," he said. "I called you so many times and you never called me back."
Magnus looked at Alec as if he'd lost his mind. "Your city is under attack," he said. "The wards have broken, and the streets are full of demons. And you want to know why I haven't called you? — Cassandra Clare

Gabe nodded a hello, a little shocked at the woman's appearance. She was a knockout. Dark auburn hair curling around her shoulders, pretty green eyes behind square black glasses. He looked back at Duncan but he was looking at the woman as well, and Gabe had been attached long enough to know that look. That was the 'I just want to look at you because you're so beautiful' look. He'd caught himself doing it with Julie more times than was probably acceptable. But he couldn't help himself. And judging by Duncan's look, he couldn't either. As — J.M. Madden

I want it all. I want the Pepsi endorsement. I want the arena shows. I want Times Square! — Betty Who

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

That's what the internet is: it's like bombarding your eyeballs with these myriad blinking colour lights. It's like trying to watch a movie on your phone in the middle of Times Square. — Michel Gondry

I don't demonize the downside. As we've seen in Egypt and Tahrir square and other recent event, the adhesiveness through [technology] kinds of communication is extraordinary. Interesting times we live in. — Anne Waldman

I couldn't pick just one.
The moment I'd touched the sugar packet, a thousand thoughts cascaded through my mind.
I want to go shopping in Times Square.
I want to go to the top of the Empire State Building.
I want Dad to finish his meetings and come see the city with me.
I want to travel to Paris.
I want to fall in love so hard it makes me cry.
I want ...
I shook my head. Sam didn't know what he was asking. How could this small pink square of processed sugar be transformed into my heart's desire?
I want Mom to come home. — Lisa Mangum

The people from the suburbs are bringing along their suburban values: cleanliness, orderliness, safety - dullness, in other words. As a result, urban areas are being hollowed out. Just look at Times Square in New York. No more sex shops, no drugs, no homeless people. The area is clinically clean and incredibly dull. — Rem Koolhaas

The collect-it-all system did nothing to detect, let alone disrupt, the 2012 Boston Marathon bombing. It did not detect the attempted Christmas-day bombing of a jetliner over Detroit, or the plan to blow up Times Square, or the plot to attack the New York City subway system - all of which were stopped by alert bystanders or traditional police powers. — Glenn Greenwald

... and Brian Dooher is down injured. And while he is, I'll tell ye a little story. I was in Times Square in New York last week, and I was missing the Championship back home. So I approached a newsstand and I said 'I suppose you wouldn't have the Kerryman would you?' To which the Egyptian man behind the counter replied 'do you want the North Kerry edition or the South Kerry edition?'. He had both, so I bought both. And Dooher is back on his feet... — Micheal O Muircheartaigh

Sumer, the land which came to be known in classical times as Babylonia, consists of the lower half of Mesopotamia, roughly identical with modern Iraq from north of Baghdad to the Persian Gulf. It has an area of approximately 10,000 square miles, somewhat larger than the state of Massachusetts. Its climate is extremely hot and dry, and its soil, left to itself, is arid, wind-swept, and unproductive. The land is flat and river-made, and therefore has no minerals whatever and almost no stone. Except for the huge reeds in the marshes, — Samuel Noah Kramer

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

That hemisphere of the moon which faces us is better known than the earth itself; its vast desert plains have been surveyed to within a few acres; its mountains and craters have been measured to within a few yards; while on the earth's surface there are 30,000,000 square kilometres (sixty times the extent of France), upon which the foot of man has never trod, which the eye of man has never seen. — Camille Flammarion

When I was on Broadway when I was little, I remember always driving through Times Square with my dad to the theater. Now when I go back, you can't even drive on Broadway in the 40s. New Times Square is too touristy to me. — Jenna Ushkowitz

Ron Paul is crazy, the guardians of respectable opinion assured us. What they really meant was that Ron Paul defied traditional political categories and advanced positions outside the Clinton-to-Romney continuum. People whose minds have been formed in ideological prison camps for 12 years have learned to confine themselves within an approved range of possibilities. Tax me 35 percent or tax me 40 percent, but don't raise the possibility that taxation itself may be a moral issue rather than just a matter of numbers. Either bomb or starve that poor country, but don't tell me there might be a third option. The Fed should loosen or the Fed should tighten, but don't tell me our money supply doesn't need to be supervised by a central planner. As always, confine yourself to the three square inches of intellectual terrain the New York Times has graciously allotted to you. — Thomas E. Woods Jr.

Hookers in Times Square, God bless 'em, are offering a Mitt Romney Special. For an extra $20 they'll change positions. — David Letterman

The Times Square Incident wasn't a terrorist attack, it was a Jim Carrey movie. The terrorist locked the keys to the safe house he was going to escape to in the carbomb. And I love that he locked the carbomb. Nobody's getting my Ipod. Then he left the keys to carbomb hanging out of the tailgate of the carbomb, and built the carbomb out of fertilizer that wouldn't explode. I have been doing comedy for 25 years and I have never been that funny. — Christopher Titus

I approached Red Square three times, trying to find somewhere to land, before discovering a wide bridge nearby. I landed there and taxied into Red Square. — Mathias Rust

One of the many reasons I love living in New York is that we get a front row seat to the innumerable thrills that take place here - from conventions and awards shows, to parades and U.N. assemblies. But my favorite New York tradition is the annual New Year's Eve ball-drop on Times Square. — Marlo Thomas

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

There was someone called Hippasus in Greek times who found out about the diagonal of a square and they drowned him because no one wanted to know about things like that. Like what? Numbers that make you uncomfortable and don't relate to oranges. — Caryl Churchill

May 1, 2011
Young jubulent Americans celebrating the killing of a murderer of women and children, and people ask;
"Is it right to celebrate?"
I watched these Americans in Times Square, D.C. and the world , a great generation, that died for freedom and that of the oppressed, and people ask; "Is it right to feel joy?"
"Yes, I sat proudly with tears in my eyes."
I was watching footage of the end of World War Two ... Johnny Flora — Johnny Flora

I remember the old Times Square from when I was younger, and there was a seedy thrill to it. Some of that is gone, which I have a little bit of nostalgia for. — Janeane Garofalo

When I opened the world's largest Internet cafe, certified by the 'Guinness Book of Records,' in Times Square in New York, I was live on 'Good Morning America,' and for me, that was an achievement. — Stelios Haji-Ioannou

I always have a positive reaction to Times Square - you've got so many people passing through here, so many cultures, and so many people merging into the central community of New York City. This is the hub of America. — Dhani Jones

Anytime we worked a quilt, it was the thing to do to set out an empty chair. It was for the missing woman. The friend who might call, just as you'd sat to quilt, and who might bring a loaf of bread, lend a hand, do a square ...
There are times I miss the things I haven't done in my life. The things that Savannah is so good at doing, like taking up the empty chair. — Nancy E. Turner

But I'm three times your age or more and my brain is worn out and full up. I don't have much room to tuck new things square inside; they just cling to the outside for a while and drop off. — Orson Scott Card

I plan on getting out there and mixing with the crowd. I want to show everyone what happens in Times Square not from a distance, but from right there in the crowd. — Regis Philbin

I had a paint pony called Half-Pint, and I rode her in Madison Square Garden, and that was my first big show. But my first real pony was this red pony called Chantal. He was absolutely amazing. He was a great pony, except he did spin me off a couple of times! I would blink, and then I would be on the floor. — Jessica Springsteen

When we got off the streetcar at Times Square, it was somewhat of a letdown. Newspapers were blowing about the road and pavement, and Broadway looked seedy, like a slovenly woman just out of bed. — Charlie Chaplin

The soft rush of taxis by him, and laughter, laughters hoarse as a crow's, incessant and loud, with the rumble of the subways underneath - and over all, the revolutions of light, the growings and recedings of light - light dividing like pearls - forming and reforming in glittering bars and circles and monstrous grotesque figures cut amazingly on the sky. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Is the square root of hate the same thing as love times love? — Eugene Mirman

I've got a better idea," says my mother. "Tell me about what you did today. Tell me about New York." So I do, I tell the lifelong New Yorker who chucked it for the woods about the streets of the city: how the subway was so crowded this morning I had to let four trains pass in a row and I was a half hour late to work; how I had a meeting in Times Square and I saw an army of painted topless women posing with tourists for money; how I saw two people dressed up as Disney characters get into a fistfight; how I ate a hot dog from a stand after my client meeting bombed and when I finished it I ate another, on one of the chairs scattered in Bryant Park. A string quartet was playing nearby, under a sponsor banner. "The music part was the part that saved me," I say. "All of it would have saved me," says my mother. — Jami Attenberg

In old times people used to try and square the circle; now they try and devise schemes for satisfying the Irish nation. — Samuel Butler

I would roll up pennies to take the subway to work in Times Square. I was broke, but I was happy. — Jennifer Garner

My mom was scared of the old Times Square so I was never allowed to go. Now I'm scared of the new Times Square, so I still never go. — Padma Lakshmi

L.A., it's nice, but I think of sunshine and people on rollerblades eating sushi. New York, I think of nighttime, I think of Times Square and Broadway and nightlife and the city that never sleeps. — Jimmy Fallon

Security here in New York City is still very tight. Hookers in Times Square now are demanding two forms of fake ID. — David Letterman

The biggest thing I don't like about New York are the foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country? — John Rocker

But treat dimes fair and I'm bigger than the city lights down in times square — Puff Daddy

Food is something I am going to have to face at least three times a day for the rest of my life. And I am not perfect. But one really bad day does not mean that I am hopeless and back at square one with my eating disorder. Olympic ice skaters fall in their quest for the gold. Heisman Trophy winners throw interceptions. Professional singers forget the words. And people with eating disorders sometimes slip back into an old pattern. But all of these individuals just pick themselves back up and do the next right thing. The ice skater makes the next jump. The football player throws the next pass. The singer finishes the song. And I am going to eat breakfast. — Jenni Schaefer

The book also says that coping with difficult times is like being in a conical shell-shaped spiral and there is a point at each turn that is very painful and difficult. That is your particular problem or sore spot. When you are at the narrow, pointy end of the spiral you come back to that situation very often as the rotations are quite small. As you go round, you will go through the troubled time less and less frequently but still you must come back to it, so you shouldn't feel when it happens that you are back to square one. Trouble — Helen Fielding

Proverbs 7:11-12 - These verses describe, of all things, an adulteress. She is doing the opposite of the wise homemaker who tends to her house and housework. She is "out there," walking the streets, instead of being at home. "Her feet would not stay at home. At times she was outside, at times in the open square, lurking at every corner. — Elizabeth George

The whole human earth was bleeding.
Time, buildings, routes, rain,
erase the constellation of the crime,
the fact is, this small planet
has been covered a thousand times by blood,
war or vengeance, ambush or battle,
people fell, they were devoured,
and later oblivion wiped clean
each square meter: sometimes
a vague, dishonest monument,
other times a clause in bronze,
and still later, conversations, births,
townships, and then oblivion.
What arts we have for extermination
and what science to obliterate memory!
What was bloody is covered with flowers.
Once more, young men, ready yourselves
for another chance to kill, to die again,
and to scatter flowers over the blood. — Pablo Neruda

The world had been sanitized like Disney had done to Times Square. They had gotten rid of God, family, and country along with the graffiti. — Michael J. Sullivan

Malcolm gestures in the vague direction of ugly sad lonely crap, which as it happens is toward Times Square. — Chris Pavone

I used to go to the Improvisation Comedy Club every night in Times Square. How I didn't get killed in that area either means that 1) God is watching over me or 2) I am so insignificant to God that he didn't bother having me killed. — Gilbert Gottfried

For no reason at all, I thought of New Year's Eve, when all those people crowd into Times Square and scream like jackals as the lighted ball slides down the pole, ready to shed its thin party glare on three hundred and sixty-five new days in this best of all possible worlds. I have always wondered what it would be like to be caught in one of those crowds, screaming and not able to hear your own voice, your individuality momentarily wiped out and replaced with the blind empathic overslop of the crowd's lurching, angry anticipation, hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder with no one in particular. — Richard Bachman

If you have two steaks, one that's an inch thick, one that's 2 inches thick, how much longer does the thicker one need to cook? It's four times as long. It goes roughly like the square. How come cookbooks don't tell you that? — Nathan Myhrvold

I know what you're gonna think, what you're gonna ask. Percy Jackson, why are you hanging from a Times Square billboard without your pants on, about to fall to your death? — Rick Riordan

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

All right, New York City! Welcome to Madison ... Square ... Jericho! And after tonight, when I become the true, undisputed Intercontinental champion, the Jerichoholics of the Big Apple will throw a celebration party that will make the millennium bash in Times Square look like my sister's seventh birthday party! It'll be a celebration so huge, so grandiose, so spectacular, that it will never, EEEEEEEEVER, be forgotten again! — Chris Jericho

I still love you," he says, "but I have to go my own way." "So you want to break up?" I ask, trembling. "I guess so," he says. I fall to the floor, like a woman in the twelfth century fainting at the sight of a hanging in her town square. Later, my mother comes home from a party and finds me catatonic, lying across the bed, surrounded by pictures of him and me, the mittens he bought me at Christmas folded beneath my cheek. I am crippled by what feels like sadness but what I will later diagnose as embarrassment. She tells me this is a great excuse: to take time for myself, to cry a bunch, to eat only carbohydrates slathered in cheese. "You will find," she says, "that there's a certain grace to having your heart broken." I will use this line many times in the years to come, giving it as a gift to anyone who needs it. — Lena Dunham

What you do for Jewish New Year is you go down to Times Square ... It's a lot quieter than the regular New Year. It's just a few Jews walking around going, "sup?" — Jon Stewart

If overpopulation or lack of resources created poverty, then Hong Kong should be poor. Hong Kong has 20 times as many people per square mile as India, and no valuable natural resources. Yet Hong Kong is rich; the average income there is higher than in Great Britain or Canada. This is a recent development. In the 1920s, Hong Kong was as poor as India. But in a relatively short time it became rich because of one key ingredient: economic freedom. — John Stossel

I feel New York is too crazy for me, especially when you go to Times Square. — Alessia Cara

The times today are too dangerous for the young and the smart to be not bothered. Know the truth. Remember, "We can deny the truth. But, we can't avoid it." We have been there; we have all been there. Ask a female friend who is fighting for a better pay scale, ask the father of an immigrant who is nervous about the future of his daughter, ask a gay friend who is fighting for the right to marry, ask an African-American friend who wants her younger brother to be unafraid and proud, ask a homeless worker in Bangladesh whose house just got swept by rising sea levels, ask a young child in Beijing who breathes an air polluted by fossil fuels, ask a child labor in India who works ten hours and twelve hours to get two square meals a day. And, when you ask, you will know. You will know why we need to take it personally. — Sharad Vivek Sagar

'Hairspray' was a movie turned Broadway musical turned Hollywood remake, and that is the 'Lion King' circle of life as we know it in Times Square, the creative loop that swings for the stars and sometimes crashes into the upper deck. — James Wolcott

And he realized then that he had not lost all those times in the training square because he lacked the skill, or the strength, or even a hand. He had lacked the will. And somewhere on the South Wind, somewhere in the trackless ice, somewhere in this ancient ruin, he had found it. — Joe Abercrombie

Elliott performed a dance called the Dance of the Twenty-Eight Veils in Times Square. It is on YouTube. Many commenters described it as the most boring erotic dance ever performed in the history of the world. I have never been so embarrassed in my unlife. I'm thinking of quitting being leader of the clan and becoming a vampire nun. — Cassandra Clare

But then we are old and have been to the wars and value our fast-diminishing freedoms unlike those jingoes now beating their tom-toms in Times Square in favor of all-out war for other Americans to fight. — Gore Vidal

It's very weird waking around a corner and being nose to nose with myself on the side of a bus. And Times Square - that's the craziest one. — Allison Williams

And we are giddy, because dawn is here, we're at the center of the world and we're at the center of our own universe, and spring is here, and the air smells wet and clean. God bless Manhattan, you know, because it must be six in the morning on a Sunday yet trash collection trucks are teeming down the street and Times Square workers in their bright-orange uniforms are cleaning up the night's excesses and not even the smell of fresh spring rain can completely wash away Eau de Times Square Urine/Trash/Vomit, but somehow this here, this now, it feels perfect. — Rachel Cohn

For the three years I lived in New York leading up to moving out to Los Angeles for 'Mad Men,' I was an office temp at Ernst & Young in Times Square. That's about as desk-jobby as it can get. There was a lot of, 'Go two floors up and make a copy of this and then bring it to me.' — Rich Sommer

When I was the first time for a job in New York, I saw Natalia Vodianova on an oversized billboard in Times Square on a Calvin Klein billboard. — Lara Stone

If you give me Times Square, I want to give it back to the people. — JR

There are times when I wouldn't rule violence out. I personally don't like violence at all. But it wasn't until we had the Trafalgar Square riots that the Poll Tax went out in Britain. When people take to the streets and fight the police, it's the one thing the government can't control. You can march round in circles for the rest of your life and they can ignore it, but once you start damaging property and fighting with the police, they can't. Even though they tar you with a brush and say you're a set of bastards, they have to actually tone down what they are doing. — Alice Nutter

I often take a brand-new suit or hat and throw it up against the wall a few times to get that stiff, square newness out of it. — Fred Astaire

What religious Americans might have been slow to realize is that the ACLU's long march through the institutions of America has culminated at the door of Obama's White House. Behind that door stands the one we have "been waiting for," as liberals chanted about Obama in 2008. Obama is the fulfillment of the ACLU's messianic secularist hopes. No president has done more to empty the public square of Christians than Barack Obama. To the delight of secularists, Obama has been stacking the federal courts with ACLU-style judges who read the First Amendment through an ahistorical and atheistic prism, or as they like to call it, the "living Constitution," which is nothing more than a euphemism for whatever they think the Constitution should mean in our supposedly enlightened times. — Phyllis Schlafly

When I first went to America in 1928, there were spittoons everywhere. I remember avoiding spit as it flew past me in Times Square. Very unattractive. — John Gielgud

Nobody wants to hear that any aspect of my awesome life is bad. I get that. But there are days, maybe two or three times a year, when I get completely overwhelmed by my job and go to my office, lie on the floor, and cry for ten minutes. Then I think: Mindy, you have literally the best life in the world besides that hot lawyer who married George Clooney. This is what you dreamed about when you were a weird, determined little ten-year-old. There are more than a thousand people in one square mile of this studio who would kill to have this job. Get your ass up off the floor and go back into that writers' room, you weakling. Then I get up, pour myself a generous glass of whiskey and club soda, think about the sustained grit of my parents, and go back to work. — Mindy Kaling

I just went to Times Square and the underground movies, sometimes three a day. I did get my education. But I really believed then, in 1966, they would not have allowed me to make any of the movies I made. Today, you could make a snuff movie at NYU and get an A. — John Waters

The safest day at the Melody is St. Paddy's," adds another Mardi Gras girl. "All the cops are out vomiting at the parade. — Josh Alan Friedman

After a pretty amazing year that included more wins than I thought possible, I rang in 2013 by watching the Times Square ball drop on TV ... and then heading directly to bed. It might not have been the typical New Year's Eve for a 21-year-old, but what can I say? It was a training night! — Ashley Wagner

Biffi said it was more American on an air force base in Crete than it was in Times Square. — Cathleen Schine

I used to live above Manganaro's, when old Times Square was still peaking, and it still had a lot of diners and theaters on the forty deuce, as they used to call it. It was full of character. And it wasn't Disneyland. Now it's so touristy and full of bright lights, I can't stand it. It's like going to a big mall. — Debi Mazar

Worldwide, wheat covers about 870,000 square miles of the globe's surface, almost ten times the size of Britain. How did this grass turn from insignificant to ubiquitous? — Yuval Noah Harari

Lei had recently discovered how to change the display, like the Times Square JumboTron,so now the banner read: Merry Christmas! All your presents belong to Leo! — Rick Riordan

I once stood in the middle of New York city watching my name go round the electronic zipper sign in Times Square and I felt pretty thrilled, but not quite as thrilled as I felt when I saw my name in the 'Examiner' for the first time. — Simon Armitage

New York city wasn't yet the post-Giuliani, Bloomberg forever, Disneyland tourist attraction of today, trade-marked and policed to protect the visitors and tourism industry. It was still a place of diversity, where people lived their lives in vibrant communities and intact cultures. Young people could still move to New York City after or instead of high school or college and invent an identity, an art, a life. Times Square was still a bustling center of excitement, with sex work, "adult" movies, a variety of sins on sale, ways to make money for those down on their luck". — B. Ruby Rich

In New York, you are competing with Times Square lights and all of that, so you've got to be 300 pounds and crazy to get anyone's attention. Then, you can refine yourself. I always knew under those 300 pounds and tracksuits was a refined, slim, dignified man. — Al Sharpton

I can't help thinking the failed New York bomber would've done far more damage if he'd simply driven throught Times Square in a Toyota. — Frankie Boyle

We didn't make money but we never lost money. We'd sit around Times Square with fliers, walk around the Village and try and get people to come. Now you'd just tweet it, but that was the beginning of emails, or the beginning of me doing emails - I'm sure there were people in 1986 who were doing emails. — Jake M. Johnson

Thought Experiment: You are a native of New York City, you live in New York, work in New York, travel about the city with no particular emotion except a mild boredom, unease, exasperation, and dislike especially for, say, Times Square and Brooklyn, and a longing for a Connecticut farmhouse. Later you become an astronaut and wander in space for years. You land on a strange, unexplored (you think) planet. There you find a road sign with an arrow, erected by a previous astronaut in the manner of GIs in World War II: 'Brooklyn 9.6 light-years.' Explain your emotion. — Walker Percy

Wintry morning, looking with dull eyes and sallow face upon the neighbourhood of Leicester Square, finds its inhabitants unwilling to get out of bed. Many of them are not early risers at the brightest of times, being birds of night who roost when the sun is high and are wide awake and keen for prey when the stars shine out. Behind dingy blind and curtain, in upper story and garret, skulking more or less under false names, false hair, false titles, false jewellery, and false histories, a colony of brigands lie in their first sleep. Gentlemen — Charles Dickens

I want someone to need me, to depend on me. The arsehole, the bastard who's left a long string of whores broken in his wake without so much as a second thought. The piece-of-shit whose life was almost snuffed out by his father, who wakes every day and looks in the mirror with enough self-loathing to detonate Times Square, if only that shit was combustible. That pathetic excuse for a man wants to be worthy of someone. The question I need to figure out now is: why? — Carmen Jenner

I was in trouble, my life was a moderate-going-on-severe mess, and not being able to write was only part of it. I wasn't raping kids or running around Times Square preaching conspiracy theories through a bullhorn, but I was in trouble just the same. I had lost my place in things and couldn't find it again. No surprise there; after all, life's not a book. — Stephen King

And so now I'd like to say - people can change anything they want to. And that means everything in the world. People are running about following their little tracks - I am one of them. But we've all got to stop just following our own little mouse trail. People can do anything - this is something that I'm beginning to learn. People are out there doing bad things to each other. That's because they've been dehumanised. It's time to take the humanity back into the center of the ring and follow that for a time. Greed, it ain't going anywhere. They should have that in a big billboard across Times Square. Without people you're nothing. That's my spiel. — Joe Strummer

As they left the pier and walked into the park, Chahda looked around appreciatively. "Nice place, this. Capital of New Caledonia. Big island, has 8,548 square mile, also has 53,245 peoples. Eleven thousand in Noumea. That is what says the Worrold Alm-in-ack."

Rick and Scotty laughed. It was like old times to hear Chahda quoting from The World Almanac. A Bombay beggar boy, he had educated himself with only the Almanac for his textbook, and he had laboriously memorized everything in it. — John Blaine

Greed, it ain't going anywhere. They should have that in a big billboard across Times Square. Without people you're nothing — Joe Strummer

The energy varies with the square of the velocity, so if you need five times the velocity, that's 25 times the energy. — Buzz Aldrin

I've played Madison Square Garden and Jones Beach several times, but I personally don't enjoy those larger venues. I much prefer theater or a performance space. — Jason Mraz