New York City Quotes

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Here is TheDailyNewYorker’s list of NYC Quotes.

When you leave New York, you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough.— Fran Lebowitz, Rand Lindsly’s Quotations.

New York remains what it has always been: a city of ebb and flow, a city of constant shifts of population and economics, a city of virtually no rest. It is harsh, dirty, and dangerous, it is whimsical and fanciful, it is beautiful and soaring, it is not one or another of these things but all of them, all at once, and to fail to accept this paradox is to deny the reality of city existence.— Paul Goldberger

The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.— John Updike

The city of right angles and tough, damaged people.— Pete Hamill

One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years— Thomas Wolfe

It couldn’t have happened anywhere but in little old New York.— O. Henry

This is New York and there’s no law against being annoying— William Kunstler

When you leave New York, you ain’t goin’ nowhere

New York is to the nation what the white spire is to the village – the visible symbol of aspiration and faith, the white plume saying the way is up!— E.B. White

It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.— E.B. White, Here is New York

This is the town that never sleeps. That’s why we don’t live in Duluth. That plus I don’t know where Duluth is. Lucky me.— Woody Allen, Manhattan Murder Mystery

The renowned and ancient city of Gotham.— Washington Irving, Salmagundi

Everybody ought to have a lower East Side in their life.— Irving Berlin

If you’re bored in New York, it’s your own fault.— Myrna Loy

One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life.— Frank O’Hara

No matter where you go in the world, you never really leave New York, and it never really leaves you.— Billy Joel

We’re not consumers. Amen, we’re citizens and this is not a corporation. This is not a corporation, this is New York City!— Rev. Billy, Running for Mayor of NYC 2009

In 1626, the Dutch purchased Manhattan Island from the Lenape Native Americans for 60 guilders (about $1000).

in 1895 Gennaro Lombardi opened the first United States pizzeria.

Nothing is more revealing than movement.— Martha Graham

When you find yourself beginning to feel a bond between yourself and the people you photograph, when you laugh and cry with their laughter and tears, you will know you are on the right track.— Weegee

Mighty Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides.— Walt Whitman

We watched the world go home that night
In a flood through Union Square…
— Sara Teasdale

New Yorkers are nice about giving directions; in fact, they seem proud of knowing where they are themesleves.— Katherine Bush

New York is the greatest place where the lights meet the road.— G. N. Miller

Abandon your homes- We must build a bridge.— Robert Moses

The Empire State Building is the lighthouse of Manhattan— Robert A. M. Stern

O West Side that I am- I dip my toes in the hot sun-head wreathed with the trees of Central Park.— D. H. Melhem

Tremulously I stand in the subways, absorbed into the terrible reverberations of exploding energy.— Helen Keller

But, Ah! Manhattan’s sights and sounds, her smells, Her crowds, her throbbing force…— James Weldon Johnson

What can ever be more stately and admirable to me than masthemm’d Manhattan?— Walt Whitman

As usual in New York, everything is torn down before you have time to care for it.— James Merrill

From the ruins [of the old Waldorf Astoria], lonely and inexplicable as the shpinx, rose the Empire State Building— F. Scott Fitzgerald

I could take the Harlem night and wrap it around you, take the neon lights and make you a crown.— Langston Hughes

There is nothing more beautiful than New York City in the snow.— Mayor Rudy Giuliani

It was one of those late May evenings when New York seems to beth hug you and summon you on towards some reward to be found in that city and nowhere else.— Howell Raines

Every true New Yorker believes with all his heart that when a New Yorker is tired of New York, he is tired of life.— Robert Moses

I’d rather be a lamppost in New York than the mayor of Chicago.— NYC Mayor Jimmy Walker

New York is still here. We’ve suffered terrible losses and we will grieve for them, but we will be here, tomorrow and forever.— Mayor Rudy Giuliani

New York City- the place with the most gorgeous women and the best food in the world.— Bob Dylan

The city’s got the right name- New York. Nothing ever gets old around here.— Ralph Stephenson

If I live in New York, it is because I choose to live here. It is the city of total intensity, the city of the moment.— Diana Vreeland

I love New York because within its borders you can travel the world.— Dennis Gonzalez

This city is the center of the universe.— Mayor Robert F. Wagner

Other cities consume culture, New York creates it.— Paul Goldberger

Manhattan… How fit a name for America’s great democratic island city!— Walt Whitman

I’d like to thank the good Lord for making me a Yankee.— Joe Dimaggio

New York is where the future comesl to audition.— Mayor Ed Koch

New York had all the iridescence of the beginning of the world.— F. Scott Fitzgerald

It’s a miracle that New York works at all. The whole thing is implausible.— E. B. White

The present in New York is so powerful that the post is lost.— John Jay Chapman

The City. See, that’s what we call it. The rest of the world calls it the Apple… We call it the City and let it go at that.— Lawrence Block

It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City itself is a detective story.— Agatha Christie

In New York you can have anything you want, and even in the old days you could, too, so that hasn’t changed.— Brooke Astor

The city makes you want more. I travel the world, but find my real inspiration comes from New York.— James Kieran Pine

New York is the dream world, the center of jazz and rock.— Gyogy Ligeti

Once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough.— John Steinbeck

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
— Emma Lazarus

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