New York Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old new york quotes, new york sayings, and new york proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.

I went to New York to be born again. Kurt Vonnegut
It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story. Agatha Christie
New York is a city of geometric heights, a petrified desert of grids and lattices, an inferno of greenish abstraction under a flat sky, a real Metropolis from which man is absent by his very accumulation. Roland Barthes
If London is a watercolor, New York is an oil painting. Peter Shaffer
One can't paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt. Georgia Totto O'Keeffe
Make your mark in New York and you are a made man. Mark Twain
A hundred times have I thought New York is a catastrophe, and fifty times : It is a beautiful catastrophe. Le Corbusier
Quite simply, I was in love with New York. I do not mean love in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and you never love anyone quite that way again. Joan Didion
New York is a wonderful place to be up, an awful place to be down. Alexander Mccall Smith
A great many people go after success simply for the shiny prizes it brings. And nowhere is it pursued more ardently than in the city of New York. Stephen Birmingham
A lot of the time when I write about the person that I love, I feel like I'm writing about New York. Lana Del Rey
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
In New York it seems like there's no Monday or Saturday or Sunday. The town is always moving. The vibe is great. Thierry Henry
The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendour that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach. Ayn Rand
I fell in love with New York. It was like every human being, like any relationship. When I was a young New Yorker, it was one city. When I was a grown man, it was another city. Mikhail Baryshnikov
Once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough. John Steinbeck
For in that city New York there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy. Evelyn Waugh
New York has a trip-hammer vitality which drives you insane with restlessness if you have no inner stabilizer. Henry Miller
One belongs to New York instantly; one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years. Tom Wolfe
Each man reads his own meaning into New York. Meyer Berger
There is something in the New York air that makes sleep useless. Simone Beauvoir
In New York, everyone is so mixed together that there's less of a feeling of class here. Everybody is dealing with the same shit, everybody is on the subway elbow-to-elbow. Louis C.K.
In New York, they like winners. They don't like second place. Eli Manning
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
My favorite things 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
At night... the streets become rhythmical perspectives of glowing dotted lines, reflections hung upon them in the streets as the wistaria hangs its violet racemes on its trellis. The buildings are shimmering verticality, a gossamer veil, a festive scene-prop hanging there against the black sky to dazzle, entertain, amaze. Frank Lloyd Wright
I wake up every morning and say to myself, 'Well, I'm still in New York Thank you, God. Ed Koch
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. That's it. Robert De Niro
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
I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Ayn Rand