York Quotes & Sayings

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

Shooting in New York is the shiznit, if I may be so bold. It was great. New York is a character. People who live here know that. — Robin Williams

During the 1920s New York Yankee owner Jacob Ruppert once described his perfect afternoon at Yankee Stadium. 'It's when the Yankees score eight runs in the first inning,' Ruppert said, 'and then slowly pull away.' — Peter Golenbock

As Feministing commenter electron-Blue noted in response to the 2008 New York Times Magazine article "Students of Virginity," on abstinence clubs at Ivy League colleges, "There were a WHOLE LOTTA us not having sex at Harvard . . . but none of us thought that that was special enough to start a club about it, for pete's sake. — Jessica Valenti

Actually, I'm happiest in Williams-Sonoma in New York. That's a wonderful cooking store. — Blake Lively

You are that beetle on the streets of New York. The universe doesn't hate you, but it doesn't love you, either. You're just an atom in its infinite workings. The universe doesn't care if you live, die, suffer, or thrive. Only YOU care. — Johnny B. Truant

Stiff, huh? I think seeing you roll around on the floor in that tight little outfit accomplished that. — Collette West

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

One other thing this skinny Arab knew: the power of hating the Jew. He could quote from the Holy Book chapter and verse the perfidy of Jews. He could show the dagger of Israel stuck in the soul of Jerusalem where Prophet Muhammad ascended to Heaven. And this son of Islam's most holy places could wrap it all up in a tidy little conspiracy, the Jews in New York controlling America, the Great Satan, launching their crusades against Muslims everywhere. See, we Muslims are nursed on the mother's milk of conspiracies. And unless you have a conspiracy to explain everything in one neat package, we simply won't believe you. — Ken Ballen

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

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

The great novel of twentieth-century New York might be the Daily News. — Pete Hamill

I like New York in the spring and in the fall. It's one of the best cities to walk that I've ever been in. — Terry O'Quinn

Nor would he care what the target was. If they bombed Chile, it would be the same as bombing New York. — Ken Follett

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

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

Canzeroni is the only defensive catcher that can't catch. — Casey Stengel

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

When 'Twilight' hit the New York Times bestseller list at number 5, for me that was the pinnacle, that was the moment. I never thought I would be there. And I keep having moments like that where you just stop and say, wait a minute - how is this still going up? I'm waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under me. — Stephenie Meyer

It's just a spark but it's enough to keep us going. — Paramore

I was born in New York and raised in South Florida, so I'm an East Coast girl. — Cassie Scerbo

And when I first came out from New York, I hadn't driven in a long time. Now I'm like Joe Speedster. — Calista Flockhart

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'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

Now that the book is out in the world, I'm amazed all over again at what my friend did for me in prompting me to ditch realism for a more magical approach. In some ways, the Golem and the Jinni are the ultimate immigrants. They aren't just new to New York or America; they're new to people. Like those around them, they wrestle with issues of religion versus doubt and duty versus self-determination - but as inescapable aspects of their own otherworldly natures. For seven years I've lived with their questions, arguments, and adventures, and it's been one of the greatest gifts of my life. — Helene Wecker

Passed Grogan's the Tobacconist against which newsboards leaned and told of a dreadful catastrophe in New York. In America those things were continually happening. Unfortunate people to die like that, unprepared. Still, an act of perfect contrition. — James Joyce

When I got started in New York, it wasn't like it is now. If you were different from Miles and Dizzy, it was very difficult to make gigs and make money with your own style. — Freddie Hubbard

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

If you don't go to Broadway, you're a fool. On Broadway, off Broadway, above Broadway, below Broadway, go! Don't tell me there isn't something wonderful playing. If I'm home in New York at night, I'm either at a Broadway or an Off Broadway show. We're in the theater capital of the world, and if you don't get it, you're an idiot. — Joan Rivers

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

After living in LA for 8 years, I sort of wanted a change, but there's not much production in New York, which is where I primarily live, so I just sort of drifted over to London. — Alex Winter

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

I am more excited about 'Divinity of Doubt: The God Question' than any other book in my entire career, and I've had seven New York Times bestsellers, three of them reaching number one. — Vincent Bugliosi

I live in New York, and when you're older and widowed, it's a perfect place because you just don't feel lonely there, and, luckily, I like my own company, too. — Blythe Danner

When the film was presented in New York, the distributor reproduced the fountain scene on a billboard as high as a skyscraper. My name was in the middle in huge letters, Fellini's was at the bottom, very tiny. Now the name of Fellini has become very great, mine very little. — Anita Ekberg

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

Basically, there's a good friend of mine who works at EMI Publishing, a publishing company. He had asked me - he was like, you know, do you know this girl, Amy Winehouse? She's in New York for a day. She's kind of meeting people to maybe work with on her second album. — Mark Ronson

Most people don't think of Los Angeles as a theatre town, and that you have to go to New York to be in theatre, and it's really not true. — Susan Egan

Yes. A language that will at last say what we have to say. For our words no longer correspond to the world. When things were whole, we felt confident that our words could express them. But little by little these things have broken apart, shattered, collapsed into chaos. And yet our words have remained the same. Hence, every time we try to speak of what we see, we speak falsely, distorting the very thing we are trying to represent. [ ... ] Consider a word that refers to a thing- " umbrella", for example. [ ... ] Not only is an umbrella a thing, it is a thing that performs a function. [ ... ] What happens when a thing no longer performs its function? [ ... ] the umbrella ceases to be an umbrella. It has changed into something else. The word, however, has remained the same. Therefore it can no longer express the thing. — Paul Auster

In 1986, I read a remarkable article by Israel Rosenfield in The New York Review of Books in which he discussed the revolutionary work and views of Gerald M. Edelman. Edelman was nothing if not bold. We are at the beginning of — Oliver Sacks

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'd gone from living alone in New York as a lowly shoe clerk to becoming a shieldmaiden with a family to come home to. It didn't get much better than that. — Amanda Carlson

When Kleiner showed me the sky-line of New York I told him that man is like the coral insect - designed to build vast, beautiful, mineral things for the moon to delight in after he is dead. — H.P. Lovecraft

I use the [vulgar] words because apparently these words do not corrupt morally. I'm from the street in New York, hung around in a tough neighborhood. It was common to curse, you make your point. It's a very effective language. I try not to overdo it. It's never to shock. I know where it fits, it's never to shock. There's no shock value left in words. — George Carlin

I'm barely reading the 'New York Times!' But I do try to keep abreast of things. — Chris Diamantopoulos

Cortissoz was art critic of the New York Herald Tribune. — Abraham Lincoln

As for my identity within the context of New York nightlife? I left in the '90s, so I'm not part of the scene anymore. I'll always be interested in what's happening downtown, and I try and keep up with the changing faces on social media. — James St. James

I did live in Paris for three years and I prefer New York. — Michelle Stuart

I can remember when anything further downtown New York than Canal Street was risky and the whole area still looked like a '70s cop movie location; when the original loft-owners were more dash-than-cash, artistic types. — Peter York

Route 95 in Connecticut and New York is basically a series of construction areas masquerading as an interstate highway. — Harlan Coben

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

Stand-up is kind of like my home base, and doing stand-up in New York is what I like doing most. — Judah Friedlander

I happen to love working in cinema, but the theater is always there ... you know, and I would never shut the door on it. Even though it's been quite a bit of time since I've done a play, last one was in New York. — Michael York

Our world is moving at an ever-accelerating pace, and with the advent of social media, what happens in New York now can be reported across the globe 60 seconds later. — Stuart Rose

The New York Philharmonic is a tremendous opportunity, a great orchestra. — Zubin Mehta

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

When i heard on the radio that the New York Panthers had been busted, i was furious. The so-called conspiracy charges were so stupid that even a fool could see through them. The police actually had the audacity to charge them with plotting to blow up the flowers in the Botanical Garden. — Assata Shakur

Perhaps I shall not write my account of the Paleolithic at all, but make a film of it. A silent film at that, in which I shall show you first the great slumbering rocks of the Cambrian period, and move from those to the mountains of Wales ... from Ordovician to Devonian, on the lush glowing Cotswolds, on to the white cliffs of Dover ... An impressionistic, dreaming film, in which the folded rocks arise and flower and grow and become Salisbury Cathedral and York Minster ... — Penelope Lively

Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014.
The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine.
"Visit to The World's Fair of 2014," The New York Times, August 1964 — Isaac Asimov

The thing about living in New York is that there are other artists; that is the most difficult, I think they are the hardest critics. — Julian Schnabel

The handwriting is on the wall: if you want to have your franchises viable, then you can't have a situation where New York and Chicago and Los Angeles are doing very, very well, and some other teams are, but, I would say, a significant percentage of the teams in our league are struggling financially. — Michael Heisley

The first album that I bought was the Nirvana 'MTV Unplugged in New York' album. — Tove Lo

Lauriat made his first trip in 1873 on one of Cunard's earliest steamers, the Atlas. His purchases routinely made news. One acquisition, of a Bible dating to 1599, a Geneva, or "Breeches," Bible - so named because it used the word breeches to describe what Adam and Eve wore - drew nearly a full column in the New York Times. — Erik Larson

I was in a cab in New York. The cab had a sign, "Please do not smoke, Christ is our unseen guest." This guy was reaching. I figure, if he could overcome being nailed to a cross, I don't
think a Marlboro Light's gonna faze him that much. — Bill Hicks

I love the idea of being part of a campaign that captures the spirit of New York and the stories of women here, passionate about their dreams. — Rita Ora

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

Boston fans - and New York fans are the same - it doesn't matter what you do outside of baseball, they don't forgive or forget that you play in pinstripes and they don't care about your interests off the field. — Bronson Arroyo

There was no person, whether they thought I was too fat, too black, too country, too ghetto, too New York, too thug or too whatever! Nobody ultimately had the say over whether or not I was going to make it. — Kelly Price

I've been to New York a lot. I grew up in London but I'm from Chile originally. — Santiago Cabrera

The New York Times, with what was threatening to become a customary lack of prescience, forecast that it would never be a serious competitor for radio because "people must sit and keep their eyes glued on a screen; the average American family hasn't time for it."34 — Bill Bryson

For example, when I was writing Leviathan, which was written both in New York and in Vermont - I think there were two summers in Vermont, in that house I wrote about in Winter Journal, that broken-down house ... I was working in an out-building, a kind of shack, a tumble-down, broken-down mess of a place, and I had a green table. I just thought, "Well, is there a way to bring my life into the fiction I'm writing, will it make a difference?" And the fact is, it doesn't make any difference. It was a kind of experiment which couldn't fail. — Paul Auster

I wanted to earn a living wage and to see something nice about me in the 'New York Times.' I wanted my mother to be proud. I wanted all the things you want and also feel silly for wanting. I wanted readers to say they'd enjoyed something of mine - to see my photo in magazines where I'd seen photos of other writers. — David Lipsky

When I lived in New York, there wasn't as much TV or film around. I got asked to do a couple of indie films, just based on me being from The Smashing Pumpkins and A Perfect Circle. I did a couple of indie movies from Japan and one from Canada, and I thought it was an exciting, fun thing to do. I had a great time doing it, it was just that, in New York, there really wasn't as much. My studio in New York closed, so I moved out to L.A. and just started looking into composing as another thing to do, as a musician. I like it a lot. It's fun and it's a different way of thinking about music. — James Iha

The Federal Reserve ranks among the most transparent central banks. We publish a summary of our balance sheet every week. Our financial statements are audited annually by an outside auditor and made public. Every security we hold is listed on the website of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. — Janet Yellen

My worry about the New York Times is that it's got the only position as a national elitist general-interest paper. So the network news picks up its cues from the Times. And local papers do too. It has a huge influence. And we'd love to challenge it. — Rupert Murdoch

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

One good thing about New York is that most people function daily while in a low-grade depression. It's not like if you're in Los Angeles, where everyone's so actively working on cheerfulness and mental and physical health that if they sense you're down, they shun you. Also, all that sunshine is a cruel joke when you're depressed. In New York, even in your misery, you feel like you belong. — Mindy Kaling

Journeys become very good metaphors. They always have the character put into circumstances that reveal him. If I had based my characters in New York and had them just sitting and thinking about life, it would be like what contemporary U.S. fiction is about. That is very heavy, literally, for me. It doesn't become mainstream enough because the pages don't turn themselves. — Karan Bajaj

You'll never see me in a true New York raincoat, although I own one. You'll never see me wear rainboots. I guess I'm just not a rain person. — Blake Michael

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

I fell in love with jazz when I was 12 years old from listening to Duke Ellington and hearing a lot of jazz in New York on the radio. — Steve Lacy

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

I am flying back to New York as I write this. I will never forget these wonderful 35 days and I would go back to Copenhagen in a heartbeat to work there again. — Tony Visconti

Winter makes me want to rage. You know how there's road rage? I feel like in New York or upstate New York, you're just like, 'Dammit,' because you're so cold. — Liza Lapira

I've lived in New York long enough to understand why some people hate it here: the crowds, the noise, the traffic, the expense, the rents; the messed-up sidewalks and pothole-pocked streets; the weather that brings hurricanes named after girls that break your heart and take away everything.
It requires a certain kind of unconditional love to love living here. But New York repays you in time in memorable encounters, at the very least. Just remember: ask first, don't grab, be fair, say please and thank you- even if you don't get something back right away. You will. — Bill Hayes

Saturday mornings in spring should always start with a jolt of dance by Paul Taylor performed by Taylor 2. The touring ensemble, an adjunct of the Paul Taylor Dance Company, offered a rare New York performance ... It was an impressive event, presented by a group of highly individualistic dancers. — Jennifer Dunning

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 never thought of myself as a New York poet or as an American poet. — Kenneth Koch

When conservative judges strike down laws, it's because of what's in the Constitution. When liberal judges strike down laws (or impose new laws), it's because of what's in the New York Times — Ann Coulter

There's this shop in New York I go to; it has bones and fossils and insects that are like works of art. I have a few on my wall. — Eva Green

My parents moved back to New York from Florida when I was in the ninth grade. — Sanford I. Weill

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

I didn't plan this, but her lips shape the welcome I've been waiting for my whole life, her arms are the anchor I need, her body is my home. — Robin York

Another story tells of Grogan, passing through New York, performed a public burning of dollar bills, and the dollar dropped six points on Wall Street. — Jeff Nuttall

I went to college in Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon University ... studied acting there. Then I went to New York for about five years. I moved out here about 10 years ago. — Laura San Giacomo

A dark-windowed diesel train burst out of the building, close enough to make the bus shake. It helter-skeltered downward into the earth. "Where's it going?" Zanna said. "Crossing the Odd, to some of the other abcities," Jones said. "If you're brave enough to try, you might be able to catch a train from UnLondon to Parisn't, or No York, or Helsunki, or Lost Angeles, or Sans Francisco, or Hong Gone, or Romeless ... It's a terminus. — China Mieville

The traces to the East haven been broken, the Republican party will never again be dominated by the editorial writers for the New York Herald Tribune. Free at last. — William F. Buckley Jr.

After being nearly eradicated from the lower 48 states by the 1960s, bald eagles were re-introduced to the Adirondacks in the 1980s, and I'm proud to report the view from my home indicates they are flourishing in upstate New York. — Frances Beinecke