New York City Quotes

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

~ Jonathan P. Lamas

VISIONS OF GRANDEURI'm walking through a sheet of glass instead of the door,Flying over a giant candlestick lighting up Central Park,Repeating two courses at Hard Knock's College,And swimming through the Red Sea with silky jelly fish.I'm hopping over an empty row house in Philadelphia,Getting a seventy dollar manicure on a gondola in Venice,Wearing a white pearl necklace stolen from Goodwill,And running my first New York City marathon.I'm discussing the meaning of life with my late cat Charlie.Dating John Doe- the thirty-third chef at the White House,Running non-stop on a broken leg through a bomb-blasted city,And keeping a multi-lingual monkey named Alfredo as my pet.I'm spying on two hundred and twenty-two homegrown terrorists from Iowa,Worshiped by a red-headed gorilla named Salamander,Sleeping with a giant teddy bear dressed in black leather,And wearing hot pink lipstick over a shade of midnight blue.

~ Giorge Leedy

Meantime the Newspaper of Record goes around in a little pleated skirt shaking pompoms, leaping in the air with an idiot grin if so much as a cement mixer passes by.

~ Thomas Pynchon

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

~ John Dos Passos

The beauty of New York rests on a completely different base. It's unintentional. It arose independent of human design, like a stalagmitic cavern. Forms which are in themselves quite ugly turn up fortuitously, without design, in such incredible surroundings that they sparkle with a sudden wondrous poetry.

~ Milan Kundera

Look at it,' he said, gesturing. 'This window looks down upon hundreds more panes of glass, and behind those panes live thousands upon thousands of lost souls. When I feel cast down and helpless, scores of other men do as well, and when I am bitterly angry at feeling cast down and helpless, countless other people languish in concert with me. When I'm happy, it's the same. It's a bit like...I used to play chamber music. It's like a vast orchestra. And so I shan't ever be alone.

~ Lyndsay Faye

New York presented a paradox. While foreigners thought of New York has the symbol of America, many Americans viewed the city with some suspicion as the country's most foreign.

~ Charles Emmerson

New York is unruly, tangled. The city woos first, then mangles, then pastes back together in a fresh, dazzling mosaic.

~ Elizabeth Winder

Did you go to the the theatre last time you were here?'No, it's too expensive.''What did you do?''What tourists always do in New York City. Empire State, Statue of and all the galleries. There's a million galleries.''Where'd you stay?''The first two nights, I slept in an abandoned car. A Pontiac Grand Am.' Weren't you scared?''Not really. It had a doorman.

~ Sean Condon

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

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 Reynolds-Frasier

In a supersonic jet, you'll land before you take off. Your watch - if it's working right - will go back. (It'll stop if it's not). You've made a journey forwards and backwards at the same time. The trip will make you younger.

~ Zdeněk Mahler

Life is amazingly simplified,” she wrote in her journal, “now that the recalcitrant forsythia has at last decided to come and blurt out springtime in petalled fountains of yellow. In spite of reams of papers to be written, life has snitched a cocaine sniff of sun-worship and salt air, and all looks promising.” She already adored New York.

~ Elizabeth Winder

Anyway, I think Florence and I noticed each other before the local train screeched to a halt at the 110th Street station, because as I boarded it felt as though we were supposed to step into the same car, and hold onto the same moist metal bar. My wishful hunch now seems confirmed by the way she's reading her Time magazine article next to me.

~ Zack Love

To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Polonius, you sometimes have to get your hands a little dirty to set things straight.

~ Lynn Steward

Bernier turned in her chair, smiled, and shook their hands. Dana’s heart skipped a beat as she stood inches away from one of New York’s most glamorous and adored women.

~ Lynn Steward

The woman was Diana Vreeland, the high priestess of fashion and legendary fashion editor of Harper’s Bazaar and editor-in-chief of Vogue. Dana paused, eyes wide. Well, perhaps she was a bit star-struck after all.

~ Lynn Steward

You may discover that the very aspects which make it most unendurable are what gives New York its meaning. Its inconsistencies and anonymity, its seeming indifference to you and every other individual is really what makes it a safe haven for individuals everywhere (Maeve Brennan)

~ Elizabeth Winder

Dana’s window? More like her snow globe, Janice thought. She pictured Dana standing in a tiny glass-enclosed world, snow gently falling around her. Her world could be shaken but never broken. She was far too insulated.

~ Lynn Steward

Meanwhile the temperature is getting hotter and hotter so no one can think clearly. No one perceives. No one cares. Insane madness come out like life is a terrific party.

~ Kathy Acker

Dana daydreamed of one day being able to set her agenda at B.Altman with the same courage and tenacity as the woman who was now driving the VW while speaking animatedly about her travel plans for the near future. She would be journeying to India in search of exotic merchandise for the store’s Indian extravaganza, a lavish event planned by Ira Neimark and Dawn Mello to compete with Bloomingdale’s Retailing as Theater movement. The movement was the brainchild of Bloomingdale’s Marvin Traub, who staged elaborate presentations such as China: Heralding the Dawn of a New Era. Typical extravaganzas featured fashion, clothing, food, and art from various regions of the world.“I’ll bring back enough items to make Bloomingdale’s blush!” Nina said confidently. “And I’m not just talking sweaters, hats, and walking sticks. I’ll stop first in the Himalayas and prowl the Landour Bazaar.”Lynn Steward ~ A Very Good Life

~ Lynn Steward

Andrew laughed at the use of the word “theater.” “B.Atlman will have plenty of theater on Monday,” he said, “when Estée Lauder arrives to secure a prime location in the new cosmetic department. I was told on Friday that she intends to bring along her husband, Joseph, as well as her sons, Leonard and Ronald, to make sure she gets exactly what she wants.” Nina laughed loudly. “Oh, she’ll get what she wants all right. She’s a determined woman.” She glanced sideways at Dana. “And we know what a determined woman can accomplish, don’t we?” “Yes, we do,” Dana replied. In Nina’s presence, the restrictions imposed by Bea and Helen seemed almost trivial. Dana had experienced a single setback, but Nina was a reminder of what real determination and enthusiasm could accomplish. “Her reputation precedes her,” Andrew said. “Ira already told me to give Ms. Lauder whatever she wants.” “Sounds like a done deal,” Dana said. “That’s why there’s going to be a little drama on Monday,” Andrew said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. “The space she wants has already been promised to Charles of the Ritz.

~ Lynn Steward

What I love about New York: the faster and more recklessly my cab driver drives the safer and all around better I feel.

~ Gregor Collins

There was some kind of scuffle two hundred yards down the street, again strangely noiseless, and a huddled knot of men opened up to reveal two brawlers being separated and pulled away from their fight. What I saw next gave me a fright: in the farther distance, beyond the listless crowd, the body of a lynched man dangling from a tree. The body was slender, dressed from head to toe in black, reflecting no light. It soon resolved itself, however, into a less ominous thing: dark canvas sheeting on a construction scaffold, twirling in the wind.

~ Teju Cole

Fuck the Bureau! Their entire outfit is half the size of the NYPD. I've got more officers who speak Arabic in one precinct that you guys have in the entire D.O.D.!

~ Brian K. Vaughan

If Sex and the City taught us anything, it's that Paris is the only city in the world that New Yorkers actually fantasize about.

~ Elizabeth Bard

That's the problem with being born in New York, the old newsman observed a little sadly. You've got no New York to run away to.

~ Amor Towles

How about a drop of something to cut the phlegm?Why don't you stay sober today?We didn't come to New York to stay sober.

~ Dashiell Hammett

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

Everyone in New York City thinks they are famous without being famous.

~ Ethan H. Minsker

I'm an urban New Yorker to the last molecule.

~ Robert Silverberg

Oh, Williamsburg. There was a point when you seemed like a scary, tough neighborhood, but now it's obvious that the graffiti on your walls gets put there by art students.

~ Imogen Binnie

In the 1970s in New York everyone slept till noon.

~ Edmund White

I remember looking out the window of the little maid's room where we had been installed, seeing the lights of the Palisades across the way, and thinking, There! There it is! There's New York, this wonderful city, I'll go live there someday. Even being in New York, the actual place, I found the idea of New York so wonderful that I could only imagine it as some other place, greater than any place that would let me sleep in it--a distant constellation of lights I had not yet been allowed to visit. I had arrived in Oz only to think, Well, you don't LIVE in Oz, do you?

~ Adam Gopnik

If you think you’ll find intellectual stimulation, you’re thinking of another era. The conversations are invariably about money or property or schools. I’ve never been more bored by casual chat.

~ Andrew Sullivan

Nothing can prepare the uninitiated for New York City.

~ Therese Anne Fowler

It was a grungy, dangerous, bankrupt city without normal services most of the time. The garbage piled up and stank during long strikes of the sanitation workers. A major blackout led to days and days of looting. We gay guys wore whistles around our necks so we could summon help from other gay men when we were attacked on the streets by gangs living in the projects between Greenwich Village and the West Side leather bars...The upside was that the city was inexpensive…

~ Edmund White

In Washington Square, one could still feel the characters of Henry James and the presence of the author himself. Entering the perimeters of the white arch, one was greeted by the sounds of bongos and acoustic guitars, protest singers, political arguments, activists leafleting, older chess players challenged by the young. This open atmosphere was something I had not experienced, simple freedom that did not seem to be oppressive to anyone.

~ Patti Smith Just Kids

We thought of [New York] as a free city, like one of those storied prewar tropical nests of intrigue and licentiousness where exiles and lamsters and refugees found shelter in a tangle of improbable juxtapositions.

~ Luc Sante

The streets of New York and some wards of its venerable institutions were packed with people who, despite being entirely forsaken, had episodes of glory that made the career of Alexander the Great seem like a day in the life of a file clerk.

~ Mark Helprin