100 Best New York Quotes About The Big Apple
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New York City, also known as The Big Apple is a hugely famous city in the United States.
New York is an important center of international diplomacy as it is home to the United Nations headquarters. It is also the global hub of commerce and business.
New York City is a collection of several neighborhoods which are scattered among Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Staten Island, and Queens.
The culture and economy of these cities are so different that it feels like traveling into a whole new area when one travels from one neighborhood to the other. New York is one of the most expensive cities to live in because of its booming job market.
It is also known as the City of Dreams because people from all around the country go there in hopes of fulfilling their dreams.
For more related content take a look at these America quotes and California quotes too.
The Best Quotes About New York City
Some of the greatest New York love quotes about the city selling dreams to dreamers, from Nora Ephron, Simone de Beauvoir, and more. Remember these quotes if you ever go to New York!
1. “All the essentials of humanity's artistic treasures can be found in New York.”
— Claude Levi-Strauss.
2. “I wake up every morning and say to myself, ‘Well, I’m still in New York. Thank you, God.'”
― Ed Koch.
3. “Pull up the shades so I can see New York. I don’t want to go home in the dark.”
― O. Henry.
4. “New York is where you prove if what you think in theory makes sense in life.”
― Miuccia Prada.
5. “New York blazes like a magnificent jewel in its fit setting of sea, and earth, and stars.”
― Thomas Wolfe, ‘The Web And The Rock’.
6. “A hundred times I have thought: New York is a catastrophe, and fifty times: it is a beautiful catastrophe.”
― Le Corbusier.
7. “The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendor that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach.”
― Ayn Rand.
8. “One can't paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.”
― Georgia Totto O'Keeffe.
9. “As for New York City, it is a place apart. There is not its match in any other country in the world.”
― Pearl S. Buck.
10. “I go to Paris, I go to London, I go to Rome, and I always say, 'There's no place like New York.' It's the most exciting city in the world now. That's the way it is.”
― Robert De Niro.
11. “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.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, ‘The Great Gatsby’.
12. “One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.”
― Tom Wolfe.
13. “I look out the window and I see the lights and the skyline and the people on the street rushing around looking for action, love, and the world's greatest chocolate chip cookie, and my heart does a little dance.”
14. “There’s something so romantic about being broke in New York. You gotta do it. You have to live there once without any money, and then you have to live there when you have money. Let me tell you, of the two, the latter is far better.”
― Amy Poehler.
15. “I get out of the taxi and it’s probably the only city which in reality looks better than on the postcards, New York.”
― Milos Forman.
16. “It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story.”
— Agatha Christie.
17. “One belongs to New York instantly. One belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.”
— Thomas Wolfe.
18. “When it’s three o'clock in New York, it’s still 1938 in London.”
— Bette Midler.
19. “It was never built for the comfort and happiness of its citizens, but to astonish the world.”
— Susan Ertz.
20. “I like that New York sensibility where you can be edgy, but still super-glamorous.”
― Leven Rambin.
21. “New York impressed me tremendously because, more than any other city, it is the fullest expression of our modern age.”
― Leon Trotsky.
Famous New York Quotes
Famous New York City quotations from renowned personalities such as Jay Z.
22. “The faces in New York remind me of people who played a game and lost.”
— Murray Kempton.
23. “This is the city of dreamers and time and again it’s the place where the greatest dream of all, the American dream, has been tested and has triumphed.”
— Michael Bloomberg.
24. “New York City is a great monument to the power of money and greed… a race for rent.”
― Frank Lloyd Wright.
25. “I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.”
― G. K. Chesterton, ‘What I Saw In America’.
26. “Mediocrity never goes away - but neither, I hope, do those who are willing to challenge it.”
― Milos Forman.
27. “But to tell the story of New York would be to write a social history of the world.”
― H.G. Wells.
28. “In order to love New York you have to hate it too.”
― Connie Eisenstat.
29. “You can just be yourself, and it’s perfectly normal.”
― Henrik Lundquist.
30. “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’.
31. “New York is a wonderful place to be up, an awful place to be down.”
― Alexander Mccall Smith.
32. “New York is a great city to live in if you can afford to get out of it.”
― William Cole.
33. “The present in New York is so powerful that the past is lost.”
― John Chapman.
34. “You will never have enough space in a tabloid paper to compete with the 'New York Times' on foreign coverage.”
― Pete Hamill.
35. “There is something in the New York air that makes sleep useless.”
― Simone de Beauvoir.
36. “People go to LA to 'find themselves', they come to New York to become someone new.”
― Lindsey Kelk, ‘I Heart New York’.
37. “Now you’re in New York
These streets will make you feel brand new
Big lights will inspire you
Hear it for New York.”
― Alicia Keys and JAY-Z, ‘Empire State Of Mind’.
38. “I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details.”
― Ayn Rand.
39. “He thrived on the hustle bustle of the crowds and the traffic."
― Woody Allen as Isaac Davis, ‘Manhattan’.
40. “Make your mark in New York and you are a made man.”
― Mark Twain.
41. “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 perishable dream itself.”
― Joan Didion.
42. “I didn’t know the city at all, but I was so happy to be in New York I cried. I was so excited.”
— Greta Gerwig.
43. “If London is a watercolor, New York is an oil painting.”
― Peter Shaffer.
More New York Quotes And Sayings
Great New York City quotes to learn more about the city.
44. “Robinson Crusoe, the self-sufficient man, could not have lived in New York City.”
— Walter Lippmann.
45. “New York is the dirtiest, largest, ugliest, broken-down city in the world but it's the only one.”
— Isaac Stern.
46. “In New York, I feel plugged into a strong alternating current of hope and despair.”
— Ted Morgan.
47. “New York is really the place to be; you’re going to the center of the world, the lion’s den.”
― Zubin Mehta.
48. “I believe in New Yorkers. Whether they’ve ever questioned the dream in which they live, I wouldn’t know, because I won’t ever dare ask that question.”
― Dylan Thomas.
49. “When I'm in New York, I just want to walk down the street and feel this thing, like I'm in a movie.”
― Ryan Adams.
50. “Once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough.”
― John Steinbeck.
51. “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 behind you, and nobody even looks at you funny.”
― Rick Riordan.
52. “London is satisfied, Paris is resigned, but New York is always hopeful. Always it believes that something good is about to come off, and it must hurry to meet it.”
— Dorothy Parker.
53. “My advice for aspiring writers is go to New York.”
― Walter Kirn.
54. “My favorite thing about New York is the people because I think they’re misunderstood. I don’t think people realize how kind New York people are.”
― Bill Murray.
55. “In New York, you can be a new man.”
― Lin-Manuel Miranda, ‘Hamilton’.
56. “What's the use of a great city having temptations if fellows don't yield to them?”
― P.G. Wodehouse.
Quotes About New Yorkers
These great quotes about New York City will give you a great idea of its locals!
57. “The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.”
― John Updike.
58. “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.
59. “In New York, we're out of road salt. So for the next big storm they have to use parmesan cheese.”
— David Letterman.
60. “You could grow up in the city where history was made and still miss it all.”
― Jonathan Lethem.
61. “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.”
— James Baldwin.
62. “As only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you'll live through the night.”
63. “This is the city, and I am one of the citizens
Whatever interests the rest interests me.”
― Walt Whitman.
64. “New York was a city where you could be frozen to death in the midst of a busy street and nobody would notice.”
― Bob Dylan.
65. “To him, New York meant beautiful women and street smart guys who seemed to know all the angles.”
― Woody Allen as Isaac Davis, ‘Manhattan’.
Short Quotes About New York
Best New York city quotes and sayings that will inspire you.
66. “This isn’t a fairytale. It’s New York City.”
― Alex Flinn.
67. “It’s a city where everybody mutinies but no one deserts.”
— Harry Hershfield.
68. “You have to be where you are to get where you need to go.”
― Amy Poehler.
69. “New York forces you to be in endless surreal situations.”
— Tom Waits.
70. “It is all of everything. It goes all right. It is tireless and its air is charged with energy.”
― John Steinbeck.
71. “For me, New York is comfortable, not strange.”
― Karl Lagerfeld.
72. “Things always change and New York teaches you that.”
― Richard Hell.
73. “When you leave New York you ain’t going anywhere.”
― Jimmy Breslin.
74. “It couldn’t have happened anywhere but in little old New York.”
― O. Henry.
75. “New York is the only real city-city.”
― Truman Capote.
76. “There’s such power there, everything is in such movement.”
― James Baldwin.
Funny New York Quotes
Some of the funniest quotes about New York will tickle your funny bones.
77. “Traffic signals in New York are just rough guidelines.”
— David Letterman.
78. “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.
79. “New York City is a great apartment hotel in which everyone lives and no one is at home.”
— Glenway Wescott.
80. “It'll be a great place if they ever finish it.”
— O. Henry.
81. “Manhattan is an accumulation of possible disasters that never happen.”
― Ed Koch.
82. “I saw a robin redbreast in Central Park today, but it turned out to be a sparrow with an exit wound.”
― David Letterman.
83. “New York is the only city in the world where you can get run down on the sidewalk by a pedestrian.”
― Russell Baker.
84. “New York is the biggest collection of villages in the world.”
― Alistair Cooke.
85. “In New York, you’ve got to have all the luck.”
― Charles Bukowski.
86. “New York had all the iridescence of the beginning of the world.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald.
87. “New York is a diamond iceberg floating in river water.”
― Truman Capote.
88. “The flag of New York City should be someone with four bags opening a door with their shoulder.”
― Alex Baze.
89. “Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book–and does.”
― Groucho Marx.
90. “There is more sophistication and less sense in New York than anywhere else on the globe.”
― Elbert Hubbard.
91. “A car is useless in New York, essential everywhere else. The same with good manners.”
― Mignon McLaughlin.
92. “New York - that unnatural city where every one is an exile, none more so than the American.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
93. “Don’t you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies.”
― Joe Fox, ‘You’ve Got Mail’.
94. “When you leave New York, you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough.”
— Fran Lebowitz.
95. “Central Park is the grandiose symbol of the front yard each child in New York hasn’t got.”
― Robert Benchley.
96. “Garbage men come; they don’t pick up the garbage, they just bang the cans together.”
― Lewis Black.
97. “Anytime four New Yorkers get into a cab together without arguing, a bank robbery has just taken place.”
― Johnny Carson.
98. “On a New York subway you get fined for spitting, but you can throw up for nothing.”
99.“New York is the meeting place of the peoples, the only city where you can hardly find a typical American.”
— Djuna Barnes.
100. “New York is appalling, fantastically charmless, and elaborately dire.”
— Henry James.
Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for New York quotes, then why not take a look at these Texas quotes or Alaska quotes too?
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Bachelor of Arts specializing in English, Master of Arts specializing in English
Rajnandini RoychoudhuryBachelor of Arts specializing in English, Master of Arts specializing in English
With a Master of Arts in English, Rajnandini has pursued her passion for the arts and has become an experienced content writer. She has worked with companies such as Writer's Zone and has had her writing skills recognized by publications such as The Telegraph. Rajnandini is also trilingual and enjoys various hobbies such as music, movies, travel, philanthropy, writing her blog, and reading classic British literature.
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