New York City

"These essays, then, come from New York: the real and imagined city where feminist sexual liberationists, rootless cosmopolitan Jews, not-nice girls/boys/others, loudmouth exiles of all colors are an integral and conspicuous part of the landscape; the pariah community Dan Quayle lambasted as a failed welfare state shortly before making his inspired leap from Murphy Brown's baby to L.A. lawlessness"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"New York is symbolic for the pride of mankind."

"New York was full of wonders, different from Chicago, brighter, cleaner. The clear sunlight was a startling contrast to the smoky atmosphere of the crude city I had left...Now and then I meandered into the heart of the East Side. Here was stark poverty, even worse than I had seen in the slums of Chicago. Great numbers of children played amid filth and debris in the narrow streets. Old people sat on doorsteps or moved listlessly along the walks. They seemed to have lost hope. Gangs of toughs congregated on corners. But looking at all this squalor I felt instinctively that most human beings did not prefer dirt to cleanliness, and they did not like stealing better than earning, nor a bad name better than a good one."

"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!"

"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."

"New York is the Caoutchouc City. * * * They have the furor rubberendi."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Big pimping, up in NYC."

"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."

"'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."

"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"

"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)"

"New York City, you are now riding with 50 Cent! You've got to love it!"

"I run New York. Yayo tell them, I run New York."

"Brownsville, Flatbush, Crown Heights, Brooklyn Zoo... Welcome to the jungle. New York, New York. Gangsters use sign language, and let their guns talk."

"Me, I'm takin' a Greyhound On the Hudson River line I'm in a New York State of Mind"

"Here are some tips for getting maximum enjoyment from your trip to New York: 1. Cancel it immediately. Ha ha! We are just kidding, of course. New York is in fact a major tourist destination, drawing millions of visitors each year, the majority of whom are never robbed and stabbed and left on the sidewalk to bleed to death while being stepped over by enough people to populate the entire state of Montana. Their secret? They follow certain common-sense New York City safety rules, such as: Always walk at least 30 miles per hour. Always keep your money and other valuables in a safe place, such as Switzerland. Avoid unsafe areas, such as your hotel bathroom. Never make eye contact. This is asking to be mugged. In the New York court system, a mugger is automatically declared not guilty if the defense can prove that the victim has a history of making eye contact."

"The Empire State" is of course dominated by New York City, the "Big Apple," filled with the bustle and excitement of millions of energetic, sophisticated, urbane people experiencing numerous only-in-New-York thrills such as making it all the way to work without getting peed on. As Frank Sinatra put it in his immortal and dynamic rendering of New York's Official Horrendously Overexposed Hit Show Tune, "New York, New York," "If I can make it there, I can afford to move to Stamford, Connecticut."

"Getting around New York is easy, thanks to the convenient and simple subway system. The major lines are the IRT, the BMT, the SAT, the LSD, and QED, which operate crosstown, midtown, downtown, thrutown, and camptown trains that are local and quasi-express only with alternating stations northbound between 59th Street and the corner of Twelfth Avenue and Grant's Tomb only on Wednesdays except during lobster season or for those passengers holding odd-numbered transfers and claiming more than 8.5 percent of their gross net deductible pretax noninterest income as medical expenses. If you have any questions about this, helpful attendants inside bullet-proof bomb-proof flame-proof machete-proof token-dispensing bunkers will be more than happy to continue reading the New York Post no matter how loud you yell. Or for equal convenience you can take a taxi, which you get by simply raising your hand and then bringing it down sharply on the heads of the various New Yorkers who will try to leap into the taxi ahead of you. Be sure to speak very clearly to the driver, as he probably just arrived from a Third World nation where the major form of transportation is vines. The standard tip for everything in New York City is a smile and a bright, shiny quarter. New York State is completely different."

"The idea to make New York City a state, in case you didn't know, is not original with me. There's been a long struggle for more "home rule," which, although it hasn't focused on statehood, has sought to get us more control over taxes, services and decision-making. Statehood was first proposed by the Mayor of New York in 1861; it was later advocated by such people as William Randolph Hearst and by William F. Buckley in his campaign for Mayor in 1965. Most people, however, will remember the statehood idea as it was first put forth in Norman Mailer's campaign for Mayor in 1969. He gave the idea some pzazz, but not enough people took it seriously."

"The last time anybody made a list of the top hundred character attributes of New Yorkers, common sense snuck in at number 79."

"There are so many unspoken rules when you live here, like the way you're never supposed to stop in the middle of the sidewalk or stare dreamily up at tall buildings or pause to read graffiti. No giant folding maps, no fanny packs, no eye contact. No humming songs from Dear Evan Hansen in public. And you're definitely not supposed to take selfies at street corners, even if there's a hot dog stand and a whole line of yellow taxis in the background, which is eerily how you always pictured New York. You're allowed to silently appreciate it, but you have to be cool. From what I can tell, that's the whole point of New York: being cool. I'm not cool."

"I get a certain pleasure in knowing that I live not merely in a city but in Manhattan, the center of New York City, a region so unique in many ways that I honestly believe that Earth is divided into halves: Manhattan and non-Manhattan."

"New York is the only city in the world where you can get deliberately run down on the sidewalk by a pedestrian."

"I've a distrust of big cities. I've a distrust of New York which is my big city. Why?... Well, because I was born there, grew up there. My experience of it, after all, it is pretty gloomy; and it is too big. It is one of the loneliest places in the world."

"Ungläubiger: in New York: jemand, der nicht an die christliche Religion glaubt; in Istanbul: jemand, der an sie glaubt."

"Und was heißt schon New York? Großstadt ist Großstadt; ich war oft genug in Hannover."

"New York ist einzigartig auf der ganzen Welt."

"Mein New York ist Hannover."