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eabeca2 The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world. new-york-city F. Scott Fitzgerald
8b31d7a I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window - no, I don't feel how small I am - but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body. new-york-city Ayn Rand
63f4f03 New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it - once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough. new-york-city John Steinbeck
e8f9ebd What's the use of a great city having temptations if fellows don't yield to them? temptation new-york-city P.G. Wodehouse
b439a74 I love New York. You can pop out of the Underworld in Central Park, hail a taxi, head down Fifth Avenue with a giant hellhound loping along behind you, and nobody even looks at you funny. Of course, the Mist helped. People probably couldn't see Mrs. O'Leary, or maybe they thought she was a large,loud,very friendly truck. percy-jackson new-york-city Rick Riordan
49cbb8b ...for in that city [New York] there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy. new-york-city Evelyn Waugh
c232494 You swallow hard when you discover that the old coffee shop is now a chain pharmacy, that the place where you first kissed so-and-so is now a discount electronics retailer, that where you bought this very jacket is now rubble behind a blue plywood fence and a future office building. Damage has been done to your city. You say, ''It happened overnight.'' But of course it didn't. Your pizza parlor, his shoeshine stand, her hat store: when they were here, we neglected them. For all you know, the place closed down moments after the last time you walked out the door. (Ten months ago? Six years? Fifteen? You can't remember, can you?) And there have been five stores in that spot before the travel agency. Five different neighborhoods coming and going between then and now, other people's other cities. Or 15, 25, 100 neighborhoods. Thousands of people pass that storefront every day, each one haunting the streets of his or her own New York, not one of them seeing the same thing. loss individuality memories change mom-and-pop-stores retail modern-society transience neighborhoods new-york-city consumerism Colson Whitehead
5d943c3 So I went to New York City to be born again. It was and remains easy for most Americans to go somewhere else and start anew. I wasn't like my parents. I didn't have any supposedly sacred piece of land or shoals of friends to leave behind. Nowhere has the number zero been of more philisophical value than in the United States.... and when the [train] plunged into a tunnel under New York City, with it's lining of pipes and wires, I was out of the womb and into the birth canal. rebirth new-york-city Kurt Vonnegut
f57b84e You could grow up in the city where history was made and still miss it all. witnessing-history missing-out new-york-city Jonathan Lethem
cb08852 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. new-york-city Kathy Acker
d8f6d7b "I mean it," I said. "You're in danger." "Relax, Harry. I'm not letting anyone lick me, and I'm not looking anyone in the eyes. It's kind of like visiting New York." new-york-city Jim Butcher
2569b5f One of the highlights of the first Good Omens tour was Neil and I walking through New York singing Shoehorn with Teeth. Well, we'd had a good breakfast. And you don't get mugged, either. shoehorn-with-teeth they-might-be-giants new-york-city Terry Pratchett
645d7b4 He stepped to the window and pointed to the skyscrapers of the city. He said that we had to extinguish the lights of the world, and when we would see the lights of New York go out, we would know that our job was done. new-york-city Ayn Rand
ff8f16e She missed the built environment of New York City. It was only in an urban landscape, amid straight lines and architecture, that she could situate herself in human time and history. She missed people. She missed human intrigue, drama and power struggles. She needed her own species, not to talk to, necessarily, but just to be among, as a bystander in a crowd or an anonymous witness. humanity society new-york-city Ruth Ozeki
b520626 It was generally agreed that a coffin-size studio on Avenue D was preferable to living in one of the boroughs. Moving from one Brooklyn or Staten Island neighborhood to another was fine, but unless you had children to think about, even the homeless saw it as a step down to leave Manhattan. Customers quitting the island for Astoria or Cobble Hill would claim to welcome the change of pace, saying it would be nice to finally have a garden or live a little closer to the airport. They'd put a good face one it, but one could always detect an underlying sense of defeat. The apartments might be bigger and cheaper in other places, but one could never count on their old circle of friend making the long trip to attend a birthday party. Even Washington Heights was considered a stretch. People referred to it as Upstate New York, though it was right there in Manhattan. new-york-city David Sedaris
7764254 New York City is where specks of dust aspire randomly with all their cunning to become grains of sand. johnny-depp jp-donleavy new-york-city David B. Lentz
d9e210a In New York, the buildings are like mountains in some ways, but they are only alive because of the people living in them. Real mountains are alive all over. new-york-city Silas House
4561ea7 Whoever is born in New York is ill-equipped to deal with any other city: all other cities seem, at best, a mistake, and, at worst, a fraud. No other city is so spitefully incoherent. Whereas other cities flaunt there history - their presumed glory - in vividly placed monuments, squares, parks, plaques, and boulevards, such history as New York has been unable entirely to obliterate is to be found, mainly, in the backwaters of Wall Street, in the goat tracks of Old and West Broadway, in and around Washington Square, and, for the relentless searcher, in grimly inaccessible regions of The Bronx. history new-york-city James Baldwin
63f3b4e [H]e could see the island of Manhattan off to the left. The towers were jammed together so tightly, he could feel the mass and stupendous weight.Just think of the millions, from all over the globe, who yearned to be on that island, in those towers, in those narrow streets! There it was, the Rome, the Paris, the London of the twentieth century, the city of ambition, the dense magnetic rock, the irresistible destination of all those who insist on being where things are happening-and he was among the victors! dreams buildings density towers victor skyscrapers island manhattan new-york-city power paris rome new-york Tom Wolfe
8eb9762 His laugh and his voice were both pleasant. He talked the way New Yorkers used to talk before they learned to talk Flatbush. humor new-york-city Raymond Chandler
bb5c5f7 When she thought of New York City now, the place where she'd lived for most of her life, the only home she'd ever really known, she realized the city was like a person who now oftentimes struggled to stand proud because both its legs had collapsed in a sea of dust, fire and scattered office papers. september-11th-attacks twin-towers september-11th world-trade-center terrorism new-york-city new-york Rebecca McNutt
1982f71 Only in a crowded, diverse place like New York, surrounded by strangeness, do I come home to myself. cities new-york-city Jonathan Franzen
4df8e00 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. sober new-york-city Dashiell Hammett
e1d3afa "Now the evening's at its noon, its meridian. The outgoing tide has simmered down, and there's a lull-like the calm in the eye of a hurricane - before the reverse tide starts to set in. The last acts of the three-act plays are now on, and the after-theater eating places are beginning to fill up with early comers; Danny's and Lindy's - yes, and Horn & Hardart too. Everybody has got where they wanted to go - and that was out somewhere. Now everybody will want to get back where they came from - and that's home somewhere. Or as the coffee-grinder radio, always on the beam, put it at about this point: 'New York, New York, it's a helluva town, The Bronx is up, the Battery's down, And the people ride around in a hole in the ground. Now the incoming tide rolls in; the hours abruptly switch back to single digits again, and it's a little like the time you put your watch back on entering a different time zone. Now the buses knock off and the subway expresses turn into locals and the locals space themselves far apart; and as Johnny Carson's face hits millions of screens all at one and the same time, the incoming tide reaches its crest and pounds against the shore. There's a sudden splurge, a slew of taxis arriving at the hotel entrance one by one as regularly as though they were on a conveyor belt, emptying out and then going away again. Then this too dies down, and a deep still sets in. It's an around-the-clock town, but this is the stretch; from now until the garbage-grinding trucks come along and tear the dawn to shreds, it gets as quiet as it's ever going to get. This is the deep of the night, the dregs, the sediment at the bottom of the coffee cup. The blue hours; when guys' nerves get tauter and women's fears get greater. Now guys and girls make love, or kill each other or sometimes both. And as the windows on the 'Late Show' title silhouette light up one by one, the real ones all around go dark. And from now on the silence is broken only by the occasional forlorn hoot of a bogged-down drunk or the gutted-cat squeal of a too sharply swerved axle coming around a turn. Or as Billy Daniels sang it in Golden Boy: While the city sleeps, And the streets are clear, There's a life that's happening here. ("New York Blues")" midnight the-blue-hour twilight new-york-city evening night Cornell Woolrich
834e160 "I waited in vain for someone like me to stand up and say that the only thing those of us who don't believe in god have to believe is in other people and that New York City is the best place there ever was for a godless person to practice her moral code. I think it has to do with the crowded sidewalks and subways. Walking to and from the hardware store requires the push and pull of selfishness and selflessness, taking turns between getting out of someone's way and them getting out of yours, waiting for a dog to move, helping a stroller up steps, protecting the eyes from runaway umbrellas. Walking in New York is a battle of the wills, a balance of aggression and kindness. I'm not saying it's always easy. The occasional "Watch where you're going, bitch" can, I admit, put a crimp in one's day. But I believe all that choreography has made me a better person. The other day, in the subway at 5:30, I was crammed into my sweaty, crabby fellow citizens, and I kept whispering under my breath "we the people, we the people" over and over again, reminding myself we're all in this together and they had as much right - exactly as much right - as I to be in the muggy underground on their way to wherever they were on their way to." new-york-city city urban-life Sarah Vowell
957510e But it wasn't the right season to lift off. Not yet. I sat in my apartment and looked out over the city, and I just didn't feel any passion to write about the place. I didn't give a damn about local politics; I wasn't moved by the issues. I missed home. And I was frustrated by people who actually thought the world was a centre and that centre was here. 'The world's a sphere, everyone,' I wanted to say. 'The centre of a sphere doesn't lie on its surface. Look up the word 'superficial', when you have a chance. passion writing sphere surfaces superficiality new-york-city Mohsin Hamid
792a272 To the bankrupt poet, to the jilted lover, to anyone who yearns to elude the doubt within and the din without, the tidal strait between Manhattan Island and her favorite suburb offers the specious illusion of easy death. Melville prepared for the plunge from the breakwater on the South Street promenade, Whitman at the railing of the outbound ferry, both men redeemed by some Darwinian impulse, maybe some epic vision, which enabled them to change leaden water into lyric wine. Hart Crane rejected the limpid estuary for the brackish swirl of the Caribbean Sea. In each generation, from Washington Irving's to Truman Capote's, countless young men of promise and talent have examined the rippling foam between the nation's literary furnace and her literary playground, questioning whether the reams of manuscript in their Brooklyn lofts will earn them garlands in Manhattan's salons and ballrooms, wavering between the workroom and the water. And the city had done everything in its power to assist these men, to ease their affliction and to steer them toward the most judicious of decisions. It has built them a bridge. hopelessness suicide east-river jacob-m-appel herman-melville brooklyn brooklyn-bridge walt-whitman whitman melville manhattan new-york-city failure Jacob M. Appel
af204e5 "And suddenly it came to him. That Strawberry Fields garden he'd come from, and the Freedom Tower he'd been thinking of: taken together, didn't they contain the two words that said it all about this city, the two words that really mattered? It seemed to him that they did. Two words: the one an invitation, the other an ideal, an adventure, a necessity. "Imagine" said the garden. "Freedom" said the tower. Imagine freedom. That was the spirit, the message of this city he loved. You really didn't need anything more. Dream it and do it. But first you must dream it." freedom imagination inspirational imagine new-york-city Edward Rutherfurd
0abc1a5 "Hell's bells, Susan, you don't know what you've done. You've got to get out of here." She snorted. "Like hell." "I mean it," I said. "You're in danger." "Relax, Harry. I'm not letting anyone lick me, and I'm not looking anyone in the eyes. It's kind of like visiting New York." new-york-city Jim Butcher
ee74dd1 "It was a brave city, she decided, eyeing them. Brave in its other sense; not courageous, so much as outstanding, commanding. It was too nice a town to die in. Though it had no honeysuckle vines and no balconies and no guitars, it was meant for love. For living and for love, and the two were inseparable; one didn't come without the other. ("Too Nice A Day To Die")" love manhattan nyc new-york-city Cornell Woolrich
4a6f926 Do you know how long God took to destroy the Tower of Babel, folks? Seven minutes. Do you know how long the Lord God took to destroy Babylon and Nineveh? Seven minutes. There's more wickedness in one block in New York City than there was in a square mile in Nineveh, and how long do you think the Lord God of Sabboath will take to destroy New York City and Brooklyn and the Bronx? Seven seconds. Seven Seconds. manhattan new-york-city John Dos Passos
f3c8645 I had enough electricity in my booty to jump-start the whole of New York City. electricity new-york-city Colum McCann
f93063f There was a heaven beyond anything he knew where there was no jet fuel, no jumping, no burning towers... but he wasn't looking beyond yet. He was still looking back. heaven death life september-11th skyscrapers september-11-attacks terrorism new-york-city new-york Rebecca McNutt
2403a4f You can draw any kind of picture you want on a clean slate and indulge your every whim in the wilderness in laying out a New Delhi, Canberra, or Brasilia, but when you operate in an overbuilt metropolis, you have to hack your way with a meat ax. (Robert Moses) new-york-city Robert A. Caro
ebeb302 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. new-york-city Patti Smith
a5416ff 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. new-york-times new-york-city Thomas Pynchon
c6cd3ae It was the soul of the machine, the ethological epicentre, the planetary ground zero of their commercial energy. I could almost feel it, shivering down like bomb-blasted rivers of glass from these undreaming towers of dark and light invading the snow-dark sky. ethological-epicentre snow-dark-sky new-york-city Iain M. Banks
b4d2d3f New York City is a phoenix rising from the ashes. phoenix-rising phoenix world-trade-center september-11-attacks terrorism new-york-city sad new-york Rebecca McNutt
6f35fe4 "She fought the urge to scream, feeling desperately like she needed to run, that she needed to go as far away from Manhattan as possible and never even give it so much as a backwards glance, but she was frozen to the spot like a wind-up toy that had finally given out. "This city is falling apart!" she shouted in cheerful trauma, her voice shaky and muddled by anxious, messy laughter as it resounded in her head. In a coping sort of euphoria she skipped lithely through the dust and debris as though it were falling snow on a winter day." nervous-breakdown twin-towers posttraumatic-stress-disorder world-trade-center september-11-attacks new-york-city trauma new-york Rebecca McNutt
55330fb We were up the whole night just talking, walking the city. You can walk those blocks forever, take a break on the edge of the fountain, eat pizza and snow cones, awed by the human carnival all around you. night-film new-york-city Marisha Pessl
d3dba15 I love the buildings. They're called skyscrapers. They're the closest thing to an ocean here. But it's an ocean that goes straight up, not flat out. They say that the body of water stretching away to the east of Manhattan is the ocean but it isn't. Not my ocean, anyway. It's weird because back home I just took it for granted, my grey-green sea. Now I have a granite ocean. It gives me the same happy-sad feeling I need sometimes. When I look straight up at the buildings I can feel alone in a good way. Not in that horrible way of no one knows me. sadness happiness skyscrapers manhattan home new-york-city ocean city Ann-Marie MacDonald
0e4e81b I had grazed along the surface of her actions and made deep judgments. Rejecting someone because you couldn't understand their love, that was a new one. The more I thought about it the longer the shadow of doubt stretched over all my conclusions. More often than not, things were as they seemed. But as I stared at her, she wasn't as bad looking as I had once thought. I realized how all this time I had seen her the wrong way, and how one's character affects one's appearance. Although she wasn't my type she was attractive. As I thought about her - the vulnerable intelligence, the violent honesty, and the fact that in the entire city she was the only one who took me in and fed me - she became more and more irresistible. Baited by an obscure beauty, trapped by an intense sorrow - all prior definitions had been overruled: this was love. love new-york-city Arthur Nersesian
be2ac30 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.! department-of-defense fbi nypd new-york-city Brian K. Vaughan
e45c1a6 Forgiving himself came easy to him. His, he'd come to realize, was a forgiving nature. fiction humanity new-york-city human-nature short-stories Lawrence Block
30de69f At noon a huge crowd of retarded people came to visit Santa and passed me on my little island. These people were profoundly retarded. They were rolling their eyes and wagging their tongues and staggering toward Santa. It was a large group of retarded people and after watching them for a few minutes I could not begin to guess where the retarded people ended and the regular New Yorkers began. Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it. new-yorkers new-york-city dark-humor David Sedaris
29022bb If Los Angeles is a woman reclining billboard model and the San Fernando Valley is her teenybopper sister, then New York is their cousin. Her hair is dyed autumn or aubergine or Egyptian henna, depending on her mood. Her skin is pale as frost and she wears beautiful Jil Sander suits and Prada pumps on which she walks faster than a speeding taxi (when it is caught in rush hour, that is). Her lips are some unlikely shade of copper or violet, courtesy of her local MAC drag queen makeup consultant. la-quote los-angeles nyc new-york-city new-york Francesca Lia Block
f695c6e If this fails to convince, I being out my secret weapon, announcing with portentous deliberation that Barbara. Damn. Walters. Does. Not. Drive. Heard of her? This sort of accusatory conversion of course almost never goes down with native New Yorkers, people who, like Barbara Walters, live in that barbaric third world country that is Manhattan, and thus have yet to hear of newfangled American Advances like automobiles, happiness, and yards. humor new-york-city Sarah Vowell
757e864 Henry Hudson was in his forties when he stepped into the light of history, a seasoned mariner, a man with a strong and resourceful wife and three sons, a man born and raised not only to the sea but to the quest for a northern passage to Asia, who, weaned from infancy on the legends of his predecessors, probably couldn't help but be obsessed by it. hudson-river-expedition new-york-city Russell Shorto
ddbdb78 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. new-york-city John Dos Passos
950fb64 "Everything good in New York used to be something awful, I guess." "And everything awful used to be something good." urbanism new-york-city Brian K. Vaughan
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