New York City, also known as New York, is the largest city of the United States by population, with 8.6 million residents in 2016. It was settled in 1613 by Dutch and originally called New Amsterdam. New York City is popularly known as the "The Big Apple", "Gotham City", "Empire City", "Fun City", "The Naked City" and the "City That Never Sleeps". Manhattan Island is often referred to as "The City" by New Yorkers, despite being only one part of the city itself. New York City is often referred to as "the Capital of the World", due to its size, wealth, and for its hosting of the United Nations organization headquarters.
Quotes
- Sorted alphabetically by author or source
- The last time anybody made a list of the top hundred character attributes of New Yorkers, common sense snuck in at number 79.
- Douglas Adams, "Mostly Harmless".
- New York is the only city in the world where you can get deliberately run down on the sidewalk by a pedestrian.
- Russell Baker, reported in Rand Lindsly's Quotations.
- Everybody ought to have a lower East Side in their life.
- Irving Berlin, Vogue (Nov. 1, 1962)
- You know what’s great about New York? The threshold for citizenship as a New Yorker is actually pretty short. If you come to New York and you still like it two years after you arrived here, and you still think it’s great and you’re having a good time and you haven’t been just totally ground down and go limping back to wherever the fuck you came from, you know what? You’re in!
- Anthony Bourdain The Layover - New York City
- I can't see heaven but I credit hell —
I live in New York so I know it well.- John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar (1968), the happening world (6): "Street Seen"
- Manhattan. Sometimes from beyond the skyscrapers, across thousands of high walls, the fearful cry of a too-well-known voice finds you in your insomnia in the middle of the night, and you remember that this desert of iron and cement is an island of un-reality.
- Albert Camus, American Journals (1978).
- New York is the only real city-city.
- Truman Capote, Quoted by James A. Clapp in The City: A Dictionary of Quotable Thoughts on Cities and Urban Life
- 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
- Donald Trump has been uncommonly nice to Hillary and me. We're all New Yorkers. And I like him. And I love playing golf with him.
- Bill Clinton, June 4, 2012.
- We are all New Yorkers, just as surely as John F. Kennedy declared himself to be a Berliner in 1962 when he visited Berlin.
- Jean-Marie Colombani, Le Monde (liberal), Paris, France, Sept. 12, 2001.
- I am no more a child, but a man; no longer a confederacy, but a nation. I am no more Virginia, New York, Carolina, or Massachusetts, but the United States of America.
- George William Curtis, as quoted in "The Good Fight" (1865).
- New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and the perishable dream itself. To think of 'living' there was to reduce the miraculous to the mundane; one does not 'live' at Xanadu.
- Joan Didion, "Xanadu" (8 August 2010), NY Daily Quote.
- This is New York. We'll find a place to dance.
- John M. Ford, 110 Stories 110 Stories, 2001
- Even old New York was once New Amsterdam. Why they changed it? I can't say, people just liked it better that way.
- Where I come from, the rules were relatively simple... Don't look for trouble, because in New York you can always find it. But don't back off either.
- Pete Hamill, Downtown: My Manhattan
- New York: where everyone mutinies but no one deserts.
- Harry Hershfield, reported in Rand Lindsly's Quotations.
- I used to love to call L.A. when I lived in New York. "What're y'all doin'? Talkin' to TV producers, huh? Bummer. Me? I'm readin' a book! Yeah, we're thinkin' back East! Yeah, we're evolving. Is that "The Big One" I hear in the background? Bye, you lizard scum, bye!
- Bill Hicks, "Goodbye, Lizard Scum" Arizona Bay.
- The selling and enslaving of the human species is a direct violation of the natural rights alike vested in them by their creator, and utterly inconsistent with the avowed principles on which this, and the other states have carried on their struggle for liberty.
- New York is appalling, fantastically charmless and elaborately dire.
- Henry James, Selected Letters of Henry James, Edited by Leon Edel
- New York City is the most fatally fascinating thing in America. She sits like a great witch at the gate of the country, showing her alluring white face, and hiding her crooked hands and feet under the folds of her wide garments,--constantly enticing thousands from far within, and tempting those who come from across the seas to go no farther. And all these become the victims of her caprice. Some she at once crushes beneath her cruel feet; others she condemns to a fate like that of galley slaves; a few she favors and fondles, riding them high on the bubbles of fortune; then with a sudden breath she blows the bubbles out and laughs mockingly as she watches them fall.
- James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.
- Panic in Wall Street, brokers feeling melancholy.
- Scott Joplin, "Wall Street Rag" (1909).
- The only reason I wouldn't go to some parts of New York is the real risk of meeting Donald Trump.
- Boris Johnson, (8 December 2015)
- I had a chance to visit America in August 2014. To be honest, I didn't love New York City because it was too crowded, hectic, and flamboyant. But I absolutely loved other parts of America I visited. They felt like paradise to me. If I could speak English and if U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services would allow me to immigrate to America, I would live in the U.S. rather than South Korea. I don't know if it will ever happen.
- Yoo-sung Kim, "How South Koreans treat North Koreans" (13 August 2016), NK News
- Scientific progress over the past years has been amazing. Man through his scientific genius has been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains, so that today it's possible to eat breakfast in New York City and supper in London.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., Rediscovering Lost Values, Sermon delivered at Detroit's Second Baptist Church (28 February 1954).
- Back in about 1753 it took a letter three days to go from New York City to Washington, and today you can go from here to China in less time than that... Man's scientific genius has been amazing.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., Rediscovering Lost Values, Sermon delivered at Detroit's Second Baptist Church (28 February 1954).
- “They want to see our skyscrapers destroyed because they are envious of them,” Mr. Koch said in a phone interview. Asked whom he was referring to, he said, “‘They’ is the rest of the country.”
- Edward Koch, “The Irresistible Urge to Destroy New York on Screen” by Sewell Chan, New York Times, (December 26, 2007).
- Leave us alone, or else expect us in New York and Washington.
- When you leave New York, you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough.
- Fran Lebowitz, reported in Rand Lindsly's Quotations.
- A hundred times I have thought: New York is a catastrophe, and fifty times: it is a beautiful catastrophe.
- New York now leads the world's great cities in the number of people around whom you shouldn't make a sudden move.
- David Letterman, Late Show with David Letterman Feb. 9, 1984.
- Traffic signals in New York are just rough guidelines.
- David Letterman, Late Show with David Letterman.
- You're not from New York, are you? You can't be from New York. Well, when I broke in, I didn't know many people by name so I would just say, "Say, hey," and the writers picked that up. The writers here in New York can make anything happen, so they made that happen.
- Willie Mays, as quoted in "Sports of the Times: The Most Natural Ballplayer" by Dave Anderson, in The New York Times (January 24, 1979)
- New York: A third-rate Babylon.
- H. L. Mencken, reported in Rand Lindsly's Quotations.
- In New York you can be a new man.
- Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton.
- People come to New York to live in small apartments, after living in large homes elsewhere. They think they will never get used to it. How will they live without their stuff (now in storage, or disposed of)? Very soon, they realize they have more than enough stuff in the apartment.
- Jay Nordlinger, "Bad Blood" (8 May 2018), National Review Online
- New York arguably boasts the most diverse population of any major city in the world because of the flow of immigrants from across the globe.
- Futurist thinkers have rarely been kind to New York City. In fact, writers and artists have spent the better part of two centuries destroying the Big Apple. Whether by flood or fire, nuclear explosion or alien invasion, New York more than any other city bears the brunt of our most apocalyptic futures.
- Matt Novak, "Big Apple Apocalypse: 200 Years of Destroying New York City, Smithsonian, (September 6, 2012).
- It came to be the symbol of the city — not just the American city, but the city itself — with skyscrapers in the early 20th century. It remains the most important American city despite the rise of Chicago at one point, and Los Angeles and D.C. At least for economics and for culture, New York is still the capital and has been, really from the 1830s onward.
- Max Page in "Big Apple Apocalypse: 200 Years of Destroying New York City, Matt Novak, Smithsonian, (September 6, 2012).
- The best thing for New York might be the sight of King Kong tramping through the streets of Manhattan on his way to a fateful appointment at the top of the Empire State Building,” Mr. Page wrote. “For if there is one thing that symbolizes New York’s pre-eminence, it is that so many still want to imagine the city’s end.
- Max Page as quoted in “The Irresistible Urge to Destroy New York on Screen” by Sewell Chan, New York Times, (December 26, 2007).
- One thing I love about New York City is its diversity. There are different people from all over the globe sharing their culture and building their communities. For example, New York's Chinatown is the largest Chinese community in the western hemisphere.
- Ji-woo Park, "A North Korean in New York" (23 May 2010), NK News
- One of the things I find most surprising is that people in New York eat while they walk.
- Ji-woo Park, as quoted in "NYC Street Food VS North Korean Market Food" (24 April 2013), by Nara Han, NK News
- [T]he most fabulous city in the world.
- Ji-woo Park, as quoted in "A North Korean goes to Disneyland" (7 June 2013), by Nara Han, NK News
- In New York City, I am not afraid of the summer heat at all because of the air conditioners.
- Ji-woo Park, as quoted in "North Korean tips on how to survive New York City summers" (21 June 2013), by Nara Han, NK News
- I really wanted to stay in New York City longer. I have been missing my life in New York City. One thing that I missed about it is the food. I really enjoyed Mexican and Indian food in New York City. I went to Chipotle at least twice a week when I was there. Brown rice with chicken was my favorite. If dark green guacamole was on top of the rice it could not have been better. There was an Indian restaurant near my school so I went there many times. When it served lunch (from 12-3 p.m.), the price per person was only $12, including tips and taxes. It was the cheapest Indian restaurant I had ever been to. The good news was that its food was as good as its prices. I feel so depressed when I think of and talk about the food I had in New York City. I will not be able to try them again until I go back to the States... One thing I have discovered is life in Seoul is much more difficult and stressful than in New York City. South Korea is a small country, but it is incredibly strong. The secret is competition. Everybody competes with each other in order to attain their goals. They work so hard that they almost never go home before 10 p.m. during the weekdays. University students, for example, would register for TOEIC or TOEFL classes even before the summer and winter vacations come. The library is full of students now even though it is summer vacation. Every student is studying something. If they did not do anything, they would feel insecure and left behind. Although New York City is viewed as one of the most bustling and busy cities in the world, what I had noticed was that New Yorkers had more room to be relaxed and do whatever they wanted. It is true that their society is really competitive, but they do not really force themselves to win every time they compete.
- Ji-woo Park, as quoted in "A North Korean in New York City says goodbye" (10 August 2013), by Nara Han, NK News
- I bow my head to the victims of terrorism. I am highly impressed of the courage of New York residents. The great city and the great American nation are to win!
- Vladimir Putin, inscription at the World Trade Center Memorial Wall (15 November 2001).
- That particular sense of sacred rapture men say they experience in contemplating nature- I've never received it from nature, only from. Buildings, Skyscrapers. I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. 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 pest-hole 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 like to throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.
- Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (1943).
- They're building armoured skyscrapers in New York, every flat costs 100 billions euros. We're going towards a new middle-age: there'll be fortresses with rich chinese, russians, indians, arabians, americans inside, while the rest of the world will live in a new dark age.
- Marco Rizzo, Interview, 4 January 2017
- Living in California adds ten years to a man's life. And those extra ten years I'd like to spent in New York.
- Harry Ruby, reported in Rand Lindsly's Quotations.
- New York is a woman, holding, according to history, a rag called liberty with one hand, and strangling the earth with the other.
- Syrian poet Ali Ahmad Said (pseudonym Adunis) in "The Funeral of New York".
- When its 100 degrees in New York, its 78 in Los Angeles. When its 10 degrees in New York, its 78 in Los Angeles. There are two million interesting people in New York. There are 78 in Los Angeles.
- Neil Simon, Playboy Feb. 1979.
- Visitors to places like New York are amazed to see the way in which Serbs and Croatians, Sikhs and Hindus, Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants, Jews and Palestinians, all seem to work and live together in harmony. How is this possible when these same groups are spearing each other and burning each other's homes in so many places in the world?
- Dinesh D'Souza, "10 things to celebrate: Why I'm an anti-anti-American" (29 June 2003), SFGate.
- The American Indians sold Manhattan to the Dutch for $700 in today's money. My point is, that's what Manhattan was worth then. It was useless, it was just a piece of land, like any other piece of land which you can buy today for $700 in many places in the world. Manhattan today is the result of the people who built it, not the original inhabitants who occupied or sold it.
- Dinesh D'Souza, Dinesh D'Souza Takes On The Case For Reparations: 'The Innovation Of America Is The Result Of Capitalism', The Daily Caller (18 June 2014).
- New York is baffling in that it's a city that prides itself on being an absolute shithole. It's like — there's nothing good here, people are proud of that, they're happy, 'Oh, it's overpriced, and it's overpopulated, and it stinks like piss, and comics! — comics film specials here!' And they all open with a joke about, 'Yeah, you spend 8 thousand dollars a month for 9 square feet!' And you go, 'Well, why do you fucking live here?' Why do people stay here?.. But unfortunately, this is where comedy works — where people are the most miserable.
- Doug Stanhope, No Refunds.
- Sometimes I get bored riding down the beautiful streets of L.A. I know it sounds crazy, but I just want to go to New York and see people suffer.
- Donna Summer, reported in Rand Lindsly's Quotations.
- City of prose and fantasy, of capitalist automatism, its streets a triumph of cubism, its moral philosophy that of the dollar. New York impressed me tremendously because, more than any other city, it is the fullest expression of our modern age.
- Leon Trotsky, My Life, 1930. Baron, Joseph L., ed (1956). A Treasury of Jewish Quotations. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc.. p. 332.
- The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.
- John Updike, The New Yorker (March 29, 1976)
Can't imagine why it should be,
But something's happened to me
I feel like smiling at everyone.
Though the world may not be perfect yet,
Still the only way we're gonna get any better is if we try.
Look at the fun we've been missing
Things like huggin' and kissin'
So let's enjoy it the way we should.
Tell me what's so bad,
Tell me what's so bad
About feeling good?
Always thought that life was just a drag
Now this daisy's got a brand new bag
Hey world take a good look at me.
Though I'm flying high as a kite,
What turns me on is the sight of life,
The grooviest trip of all
Best kick I've ever had,
So tell me what's so bad about feeling good?
- Village neighbors [Singing theme song]: So don't forget to carry a smile
And maybe after a while it will all turn out the way it should
So tell me what's so bad about feeling good?
- What's So Bad About Feeling Good? (1968), theme song sung by the Village neighbors in the film.
- Village neighbors [Singing theme song]: So don't forget to carry a smile
- The subtlest change in New York is something people don't speak much about but that is in everyone's mind. The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York now: in the sounds of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition.
All dwellers in cities must dwell with the stubborn fact of annihilation; in New York the fact is somewhat more concentrated because of the concentration of the city itself and because, of all targets, New York has a certain clear priority. In the mind of whatever perverted dreamer who might loose the lightning, New York must hold a steady, irresistible charm.- E.B. White, "Here Is New York," Holiday (1948); reprinted in Here is New York (1949)
- No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.
- E.B. White, Here is New York (1949)
- Faculty X is simply that latent power in human beings possess to reach beyond the present. After all, we know perfectly well that the past is as real as the present, and that New York and Singapore and Lhasa and Stepney Green are all as real as the place I happen to be in at the moment. Yet my senses do not agree. They assure me that this place, here and now, is far more real than any other place or any other time. Only in certain moments of great inner intensity do I know this to be a lie. Faculty X is a sense of reality, the reality of other places and other times, and it is the possession of it — fragmentary and uncertain though it is — that distinguishes man from all other animals.
- Colin Wilson in The Occult: A History , p. 59 (1971)
- New York blazes like a magnificent jewel in its fit setting of sea, and earth, and stars.
- One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.
- Thomas Wolfe, Explore, April 15, 2009 edition
- In New York the opportunities for learning, and acquiring a culture that shall not come out of the ruins, but belong to life, are probably greater than anywhere else in the world.
- From my room, I could lie across my bed and watch the cars rush along Central Park West. In a hurry to get someplace. Everyone in New York is in a hurry. You see businessmen walking fast, their heads bowed, the cuffs of their pants flapping hard against their ankles. They don't look at anyone. Once I followed this man, walking so close behind him I could have been his daughter—but he never even looked over and noticed me. For two blocks I walked like that beside him. It made me sad for him—that he could walk through this world without looking left or right.
- Jacqueline Woodson, If You Come Softly (1998) p. 15-16
- Fiction; inner thoughts of Elisha
- If you have made it this far into the story, the chances are the city in your mind is New York. Or at least some version of it. Surely no streets have been portrayed on the pages of comics as often as Manhattan’s, most famously as Metropolis by day and Gotham by night. Not to be outdone, Spider-Man once even said “I am New York.” Batman, the Ninja Turtles, the Fantastic Four, Superman and a host of other do-gooders in stretch pants may have thoughts on that. As might Mitchell Hundred, who, despite possessing superpowers unsuited to desk work, hangs up his cape and becomes mayor of the city in Ex Machina. “Stopping bullets ain’t in your job description anymore, boss,” says his aide when the guns come out.
There may not be a birth certificate for comics (especially if you embrace the broader definition of “sequential art”), but the strip was certainly raised in New York, and well fed by the competition between newspapers and their publishers in the early 1900s. Well nourished, too, by the meat and drink of urban life. - No one’s dreams were more coloured by the city than Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland, one of the earliest US strips, which ran in the New York Herald from 1905-1911. As he falls into a fantastic sleep, Nemo’s cot grows legs like a giraffe and he strides, almost Godzilla-like, through fantastic, sky-scraping scenery inspired by McCay’s memories of city expos and theme-park rollercoasters – a kind of fantasy architecture. It’s the architecture of the page, though, that McCay was most radical with. Nemo didn’t just reach across the page, but down it, in dizzying vertical panels that knocked out the supporting walls of the old calendar-like “waffle” of the comic.
- Pascal Wyse, "Gotham State of mind: What do comics tell us about cities?", The Guardian, (9 Sep 2014).
- New York is symbolic for the pride of mankind.
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)
Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 552-53.
- Stream of the living world
Where dash the billows of strife!—
One plunge in the mighty torrent
Is a year of tamer life!
City of glorious days,
Of hope, and labour and mirth,
With room and to spare, on thy splendid bays
For the ships of all the earth!- Richard Watson Gilder, The City.
- Silent, grim, colossal, the Big City has ever stood against its revilers. They call it hard as iron; they say that nothing of pity beats in its bosom; they compare its streets with lonely forests and deserts of lava. But beneath the hard crust of the lobster is found a delectable and luscious food. Perhaps a different simile would have been wiser. Still nobody should take offence. We would call nobody a lobster with good and sufficient claws.
- O. Henry, Between Rounds. In Four Million.
- New York is the Caoutchouc City. * * * They have the furor rubberendi.
- O. Henry, Comedy in Rubber. In The Voice of the City.
- In dress, habits, manners, provincialism, routine and narrowness, he acquired that charming insolence, that irritating completeness, that sophisticated crassness, that overbalanced poise that makes the Manhattan gentleman so delightfully small in his greatness.
- O. Henry, Defeat of the City. In The Voice of the City.
- Far below and around lay the city like a ragged purple dream. The irregular houses were like the broken exteriors of cliffs lining deep gulches and winding streams. Some were mountainous; some lay in long, monotonous rows like, the basalt precipices hanging over desert cañons. Such was the background of the wonderful, cruel, enchanting, bewildering, fatal, great city. But into this background were cut myriads of brilliant parallelograms and circles and squares through which glowed many colored lights. And out of the violet and purple depths ascended like the city's soul, sounds and odors and thrills that make up the civic body. There arose the breath of gaiety unrestrained, of love, of hate, of all the passions that man can know. There below him lay all things, good or bad, that can be brought from the four corners of the earth to instruct, please, thrill, enrich, elevate, cast down, nurture or kill. Thus the flavor of it came up to him and went into his blood.
- O. Henry, The Duel. In Strictly Business.
- Well, little old Noisyville-on-the-Subway is good enough for me * * * Me for it from the rathskellers up. Sixth Avenue is the West now to me.
- O. Henry, The Duel. In Strictly Business.
- "If you don't mind me asking," came the bell-like tones of the Golden Diana, "I'd like to know where you got that City Hall brogue. I did not know that Liberty was necessarily Irish." "If ye'd studied the history of art in its foreign complications, ye'd not need to ask," replied Mrs. Liberty, "If ye wasn't so light and giddy ye'd know that I was made by a Dago and presented to the American people on behalf of the French Government for the purpose of welcomin' Irish immigrants into the Dutch city of New York. 'Tis that I've been doing night and day since I was erected."
- O. Henry, The Lady Higher Up. In Sixes and Sevens.
- GEORGE WASHINGTON, with his right arm upraised, sits his iron horse at the lower corner of Union Square * * * Should the General raise his left hand as he has raised his right, it would point to a quarter of the city that forms a haven for the oppressed and suppressed of foreign lands. In the cause of national or personal freedom they have found refuge here, and the patriot who made it for them sits his steed, overlooking their district, while he listens through his left ear to vaudeville that caricatures the posterity of his protégés.
- O. Henry, A Philistine in Bohemia. In Voice of the City.
- If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptown-on-the-Hudson, called New York. Cosmopolitan they call it, you bet. So's a piece of fly-paper. You listen close when they're buzzing and trying to pull their feet out of the sticky stuff. "Little old New York's good enough for us"—that's what they sing.
- O. Henry, A Tempered Wind. In The Gentle Grafter.
- 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. In The Gentle Grafter.
- Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of exiles.- Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus.
- Some day this old Broadway shall climb to the skies,
As a ribbon of cloud on a soul-wind shall rise,
And we shall be lifted, rejoicing by night,
Till we join with the planets who choir their delight.
The signs in the streets and the signs in the skies
Shall make a new Zodiac, guiding the wise,
And Broadway make one with that marvelous stair
That is climbed by the rainbow-clad spirits of prayer.- Vachel Lindsay, Rhyme about an Electrical Advertising Sign.
- For reasons becoming clear to me, New York City you are dead to me. Well, you can turn back time but I'm never coming back.
- Momus, "Eurotrash" (2018), Pillycock
- Up in the heights of the evening skies I see my City of Cities float
In sunset's golden and crimson dyes: I look and a great joy clutches my throat!
Plateau of roofs by canyons crossed: windows by thousands fire-furled—
O gazing, how the heart is lost in the Deepest City in the World.- James Oppenheim, New York from a Skyscraper.
- Just where the Treasury's marble front
* Looks over Wall Street's mingled nations,—
Where Jews and Gentiles most are wont
* To throng for trade and last, quotations;
Where, hour, by hour, the rates of gold
* Outrival, in the ears of people,
The quarter-chimes, serenely tolled
From Trinity's undaunted steeple.- Edmund Clarence Stedman, Pan in Wall Street.
- Lo! body and soul!—this land!
Mighty Manhattan, with spires, and
The sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships;
The varied and ample land,—the South
And the North in the light—Ohio's shores, and flashing Missouri,
And ever the far-spreading prairies, covered with grass and corn.- Walt Whitman, Sequel to Drum-Taps. When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom'd, Stanza 12.
Songs
- Big pimping, up in NYC.
- Shawn C. Carter, "Big Pimpin'" (2000).
- Cause when you leave New York
Man, you don't go anywhere
It's a city where a man
Can fulfill his dreams
The only town that's left
That's got three baseball teams
(That's why New York's his home)
Let me never leave it
New York's my home, sweet home- Sammy Davis, New York's My Home (1956).
- If I can make it there, I'm going to make it anywhere! It's up to you, New York!
- Frank Sinatra, "Theme From New York, New York".
- New York City, you are now riding with 50 Cent! You've got to love it!
- Curtis James Jackson III, "21 Questions" (2003).
- I run New York. Yayo tell them, I run New York.
- You're fucking with a dirty New Yorker. Queens in this bitch, fall back or get roped up.
- Albert Johnson, "Dirty New Yorker" (2008), Grand Theft Auto IV.
- In New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made, oh
There's nothing you can't do, now you're in New York
These streets will make you feel brand new
Big lights will inspire you, let's hear it for New York
New York, New York.- Shawn C. Carter, "Empire State Of Mind" (2009), The Blueprint 3.
- But we're hunters; we take pride in airing our prey out. Leaving them laid out, dead, in just a sport. Because we aren't playing up here in New York.
- Jeffrey Atkins, "New York" (2004), R.U.L.E.
- One hand in the air for the big city
Street lights, big dreams, all lookin' pretty
No place in the world that could compare
Put your lighters in the air
Everybody say "yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah"
- 'Cause everyone's my friend in New York City
And everything looks beautiful when you're young and pretty
The streets are paved with diamonds and there's just so much to see
But the best thing about New York City is you and me.- cub, New York City.
- Brownsville, Flatbush, Crown Heights, Brooklyn Zoo... Welcome to the jungle. New York, New York. Gangsters use sign language, and let their guns talk.
- Curtis J. Jackson, "Gunz Come Out" (2005), The Massacre.
- She is a rock
As we pull but she is steady
And no one can take her freedom away, yeah
(Can't take her freedom)
I love her style
Whether she is clean or dirty
She's the greatest town that you'll ever find, yeah!- Lenny Kravitz, New York City (2014), from the on September 23, 2014 released album Strut
- She is my heart
I love New York City
She's lived and died
So many times, yeah!
Life is always tough
On New York City, oh lord
But she is fine, she always survives, yeah!- Lenny Kravitz, New York City (2014), from the on September 23, 2014 released album Strut
- New York, I love you. But, you're bringing me down. Like a rat in a cage, pulling minimum wage.
- In New York freedom looks like too many choices
In New York I found a friend to drown out the other voices
Voices on the cell phone
Voices from home
Voices of the hard sell
Voices down the stairwell
In New York, just got a place in New York- U2, New York.
- I had seven faces
thought I knew which one to wear
But I'm sick of spending these lonely nights
training myself not to care
the subway, she is a porno
and the pavements they are a mess
I know you've supported me for a long time
somehow I'm not impressed
New York Cares (got to be some more change in my life)- Interpol, NYC.
- Me, I'm takin' a Greyhound
On the Hudson River line
I'm in a New York State of Mind- Billy Joel, New York State of Mind.
- It's easier to leave than to be left behind
Leaving was never my proud
Leaving New York, never easy
I saw the light fading out
You find it in your heart, it's pulling me apart
You find it in your heart, change...- R.E.M., Leaving New York.
- Why do we still live here
In this repulsive town?
All our friends are in New York- The Magnetic Fields, 100,000 Fireflies.
- New York, New York, a helluva town. The Bronx is up but the Battery's down.
- On the Town (1944)
Dialogue
- Mitchell Hundred: Kremlin? Jesus, you can't just break into Gracie Mansion, you nutjob!
- Kremlin: Yes, when I come here from Russia as child, this whole place was filled with nothing but filthy restrooms for the park-goers.
- Mitchell Hundred: Funny, somebody just told me my office downtown was once a jail. Everything good in New York used to be something awful, I guess.
- Kremlin: And everything awful used to be something good.
- Ex Machina (comics), Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris, "State of Emergency Part 3"