NEW YORK QUOTES V

quotations about New York

The genius of survival here is not to make one's self into steel; you become bamboo, bending in the wind, not snapping.

PETE HAMILL

"Notes of a New York Nationalist", New York Magazine, June 5, 1972


Old New York City is a friendly old town
From Washington Heights to Harlem on down
There's a-mighty many people all millin' all around
They'll kick you when you're up and knock you when you're down
It's hard times in the city
Livin' down in New York town

BOB DYLAN

"Hard Times in New York Town"

Tags: Bob Dylan


New York City subways are now getting high speed Internet. How about some high speed subway trains?

DAVID LETTERMAN

Late Show with David Letterman, July 27, 2011

Tags: David Letterman


The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendour that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach.

AYN RAND

The Virtue of Selfishness

Tags: Ayn Rand


Of course, in Los Angeles, everything is based on driving, even the killings. In New York, most people don't have cars, so if you want to kill a person, you have to take the subway to their house. And sometimes on the way, the train is delayed and you get impatient, so you have to kill someone on the subway. That's why there are so many subway murders; no one has a car.

GEORGE CARLIN

Brain Droppings

Tags: George Carlin


I was lucky to live in New York when it was dangerous and edgy and cheap enough to play host to young, penniless artists.

EDMUND WHITE

City Boy


My first memory of New York is of being carried out of the uptown IRT at Times Square, unconscious, by two policemen. It was rush hour; I was exhausted from riding back and forth, trying to figure out which train stopped at Morningside Heights, when suddenly, a great surging crowd charged at me, pinning me against a closing door. I passed out. Blame my physical weakness, my provincial naiveté--my inability to understand the unique folkways of subterranean New York. I had lived too long in Paris, where crowds are controlled during rush hour by automatic gates, where maps outside and inside subway stops, as well as overhead and on the wall in each car, clearly designate stations and transfer points.

BARBARA ROSE

"Why No One Is Making New York Understandable", New York Magazine, September 25, 1972


My own favorite thing about New York: It is Possibility City. Nowhere else do you have as much of a sense when you get up in the morning that your life could be completely different by evening, merely according to whether you turn right or left when you get to a particular street corner.

JAY MOLISHEVER

New York Magazine, November 10, 1980


Naturally, one carries to New York a craving to see some of the many things that our world-metropolis is supposed to possess. One sees the things, true enough. But of the environment, almost nothing has been said. Honesty would compel anybody, not self-hypnotized, to affirm a disappointment with which that of a blind man, accidentally taken into a movie show by his attendant, will not compare. His is merely negative disappointment. New York furnishes a positive one. We are compelled to see the show.

WILLIAM HENRY MCMASTERS

"On New York--A City In Process", Originality and Other Essays


In New York freedom looks like too many choices.

U2

"New York"

Tags: U2


New York is one endless plank sidewalk.

WILLIAM HENRY MCMASTERS

"On New York--A City In Process", Originality and Other Essays


You'd think New York people was all wise; but no, they can't get a chance to learn. Every thing's too compressed. Even the hayseeds are bailed hayseeds. But what else can you expect from a town that's shut off from the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the other?

O. HENRY

"A Tempered Wind", The Gentle Grafter

Tags: O. Henry


I love autumn in New York City: The yellows, the browns, and the rust -- and that's just the tap water.... Here in New York City, the leaves turn -- and run.

DAVID LETTERMAN

Late Show with David Letterman, September 7, 2011

Tags: David Letterman


What does the future hold for the legendary metropolis, a gateway for immigrants and strivers, a magnet for builders and dealers, and a muse for artists and dreamers? What will happen to once-unique streets that are awash in generic stores, apartment boxes, and garish signs and billboards? Or to the legendary neighborhoods--Little Italy, Hell's Kitchen, Harlem, the Lower East Side--that are now simply real estate markets smoothed over with cute monikers, all equally safe for investment?

JERILOU HAMMETT & KINGSLEY HAMMETT

preface, The Suburbanization of New York


A New York doctor has finished a five year study on what smells have the biggest effect on New Yorkers. The smell New Yorkers like the most: vanilla. The smell New Yorkers like the least: New Jersey.

JAY LENO

The Tonight Show, March 30, 2010

Tags: Jay Leno