c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The suits love their numbers, Malone thinks. This new management breed of cops are like the sabermetrics baseball people. They believe the numbers say it all, and when the numbers don't say what they want them to, they massage them like Koreans on Eighth Avenue until they get a happy ending.
— Don Winslow, The Force
Everyone thought the mob was done after RICO.... And they were. Then the Towers came down. Overnight, the feds shifted three-quarters of their personnel into anti-terrorism and the mob made a comeback. Shit, they even made a fortune overcharging for debris removal from Ground Zero.... 9/11 saved the mafia.
— Don Winslow, The Force
I never wrote him. I never saw him again. He was just gone, this dear, dear man, this friend of my soul in the hospital so long ago, disappeared. This is a New York story too.
— Elizabeth Strout, My Name Is Lucy Barton
New York, of course, is to be in endless surreal situations where a fifty-thousand dollar, gun-metal Mercedez pulls up into a puddle of blood, and out steps a twenty-five karat blonde transvestite with a two dollar wristwatch.
— Tom Waits
Knowing even as I craved permanence in New York City, that would never come to pass. The pair of us would live for as long as we could. As well as well could. That was all. Then we'd blow away like wishes made on dandelion heads.
— Lyndsay Faye, The Fatal Flame
And yet, there will always be something essentially elsewhere about New York. It is a place that people come to precisely because it doesn't ever fully offer itself. It's intoxicating. Keeps you on your toes. Keeps you drinking coffee and keeps you walking.
— Becky Cooper, Mapping Manhattan: A Love (And Sometimes Hate) Story in Maps by 75 New Yorkers
I said, "It really didn't feel like a choice. Where else is there to go?
— Stephanie Danler, Sweetbitter
Part of why I love New York so deeply is exactly this elusiveness. This refusal to be caught is what allows it to carry such fantasy, mystery and myth, yet also be home. It is simultaneously no one's city and everyone's city.
— Becky Cooper, Mapping Manhattan: A Love (And Sometimes Hate) Story in Maps by 75 New Yorkers
In New York, everything was permissible. No one cared what you wore, how you looked. Only you cared about those things. And if they didn’t worry you, then they didn’t matter.
— Georgia Clark
You can draw any kind of picture you want on a clean slate and indulge your every whim in the wilderness in laying out a New Delhi, Canberra, or Brasilia, but when you operate in an overbuilt metropolis, you have to hack your way with a meat ax. (Robert Moses)
— Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
They pine for the hip, frosty girlfriend they abandoned for a pleasant if unexciting marriage to her sunnier, less mentally present sister coast.
— Sari Botton, Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Their Unshakable Love for New York
The warm humid air of New York clung to the night, unwilling to relinquish its suffocating hold. And yet to Eva, the city had an underlying hum of possibility; a constant forward motion that promised, no matter what, that change was on its way.
— Kathleen Tessaro, The Perfume Collector
We were up the whole night just talking, walking the city. You can walk those blocks forever, take a break on the edge of the fountain, eat pizza and snow cones, awed by the human carnival all around you.
— Marisha Pessl, Night Film
Another funny thing about living in this city is how easy it can be to lose track of people. We're all so busy, always rushing around, so wrapped up in our own stuff. It stops occurring to us to check in with friends. I mean REALLY check in with them.
— Ryan Kelly, The New York Four
Through a trick lighting technique the skyline was made and faded with the care of a pointillist— maybe aiding us to think nothing was missing. We traded verbsabout what was happeningin the metropolis, realizing,in the scorched plum of dusk,actual human infinity was occurring on an island before us....
— Kristen Henderson
Disrespect one of our associates and face the penalty | This was our creed. There should have been corpses floating that cold September eve. This was the perfect place to do it, too, in the middle of the ocean where gunfire goes unheard and chopped up limbs and torsos would be lucky to survive the predators and float onto a beach weeks or even months later.
— Gary "Gunz" Govich, Career Criminal: My Life in the Russian Mob Until the Day I Died
This was a quarrel they did not need | It was one they knew they could never win. Beat us with a bat and we come back with Jiggers | Stick us with a knife and we bring the heaters | Plug one of us, and you'd better murder us all. We were the authentic spectacle, and the fact they left with their lives intact, no bones broken, or a limb missing, was miracle enough.
— Gary "Gunz" Govich, Career Criminal: My Life in the Russian Mob Until the Day I Died
If Los Angeles is a woman reclining billboard model and the San Fernando Valley is her teenybopper sister, then New York is their cousin. Her hair is dyed autumn or aubergine or Egyptian henna, depending on her mood. Her skin is pale as frost and she wears beautiful Jil Sander suits and Prada pumps on which she walks faster than a speeding taxi (when it is caught in rush hour, that is). Her lips are some unlikely shade of copper or violet, courtesy of her local MAC drag queen makeup consultant.
— Francesca Lia Block, I Was a Teenage Fairy
For those of you that truly believe there's no such thing as the mafiya, I would be more than happy to sell you your own fast lane on the Belt Parkway, you know, so you can avoid the rush hour commute. The mafiya is real as a heart attack and, contrary to popular consensus, has been steadily growing in power since its inception in the 1920s. Italian organized crime just doesn't operate out in the open anymore, former mayor Rudy made sure of that.
— Gary "Gunz" Govich, Career Criminal: My Life in the Russian Mob Until the Day I Died
Fear is the primary tool of the mafiya. It's how they contain their vast criminal enterprise. For the mafiya, fear is the grease in the wheel. Fear is much stronger than love | Fear lasts much longer. Love fades and is replaced by hatred and contempt. Fear lingers and brings forth other emotions such as doubt. Fear encourages procrastination and cowardice. Besides, you always hurt the ones you love. Most are too afraid to hurt the ones they fear.
— Gary "Gunz" Govich, Career Criminal: My Life in the Russian Mob Until the Day I Died
Another deputy threw down a clear plastic trash bag with my orange jumpsuit. I reached for the bag and was knocked down to the floor with an overhead right, another shove, and I was inside the 4X6 room. The heavy white door was already closing behind me. The walls here were made of hard white rubber. There was a small shower head towards the back of the tiny cell and a grated hole in the middle of the floor | I assumed that the hold would be my toilet. The cell reeked of anguish.
— Gary "Gunz" Govich
Wanting to leave communist Russia is all fine and well | Actually leaving the country is where you might run into a few setbacks. Obtaining a visa for a simple vacation outside the soviet block was a long and arduous process. To immigrate to a free society was about as easy as finding whiskey in a church.
— Gary "Gunz" Govich, Career Criminal: My Life in the Russian Mob Until the Day I Died
The Jewish center on Kings Highway scheduled an interview at the local labor hall downtown for my father to meet one of their counselors in order to asses his skills and capabilities. When my father sat down with the fellow and asked all sorts of questions, his reply was a blank stare. Boris didn't understand a word. He did speak a little English | He knew two words, pipe and chair. So Boris did the smart thing. He kept saying pipe over and over. Whatever question, he simply replied... pipe. The counselor soon got the gist | Boris must be a plumber. He was handed a small slip of paper and was instructed to report to the address penciled on it at 6 am sharp the following day.
— Gary "Gunz" Govich, Career Criminal: My Life in the Russian Mob Until the Day I Died
We took our food order to go, in greasy paper bags, and walked across Columbus Circle to Central Park. He helped me up the giant prehistoric-looking rock just off the playground.
— Camille Perri, The Assistants
You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.
— Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York
The city was a hive from this height, the people and the yellow cabs moving about in the street below like pre-programmed insects. (Dark City Lights)
— David Levien
Here's the thing about New York, the thing I love most: there is no such substance as silence. If you ever stop talking, and he stops talking, the city takes over for you. A siren forms a distant parabola of sound. A door slams. The old couple in 4A argues over who will answer the telephone. The young lovers in 2C reach an animalistic climax. A million other lives play out on your doorstep, and not one of them gives a damn about your little problems. Life goes on and on and on.
— Beatriz Williams, The Secret Life of Violet Grant
This was the year he rode the subway to the ends of the city, two hundred miles of track.
— Don DeLillo
Maybe we become New Yorkers the day we realize that New York will go on without us.
— Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York
New York City does not hold our former selves against us. Perhaps we can extend the same courtesy.
— Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York
I wanted the rattle of New York around me, I wanted stink and strangers and the sour dank air of the IRT clutching me to its bosom. I wanted hustle and bustle. I wanted to know that millions of lives were playing out at my doorstep, and not one of them gave a damn about my little problems.
— Beatriz Williams, The Secret Life of Violet Grant
I'd known since I was a child that I was going to live in New York eventually, and that everything in between would just be an intermission. I'd spent all those years imagining what New York was going to be like. I thought it was going to be the most exciting, magical, fraught-with-possibility place that you could ever live; a place where if you really wanted something you might be able to get it; a place where I'd be surrounded by people I was dying to know; a place where I might be able to become the only thing worth being, a journalist. And I'd turned out to be right.
— Nora Ephron
New York is such an awful place. No wonder it's so crowded. No wonder it's almost impossible to leave.
— Matthew Licht
I looked up at the ivory towers above us all. Nowhere else equals the feral design of this city. Tall skyscrapers that act as gorges hollowing out between flat cement dancing into narrow alleyways like bottomless pits. Building walls rusted the color of blood. Sometimes when you look down the horizon from afar the city looks wider than it is, like a thin field of magical lights gleaming with the hopes of children and idealists; a light on at midnight in one of the penthouses or the changing hues of the Empire State Building. Most of the time though, the city is covered with a layer of honking cars and greed, sirens and the war cry of solicitors, all full of brambles and impenetrable conscience; garbage, steaming manholes, and heat waves twirling smog and pollution through your lungs like mirages as you walk breathlessly through a boiling desert.
— Bruce Crown, How Dim the Promised Land
Cherish your old apartments and pause for a moment when you pass them. Pay tribute, for they are the caretakers for your reinventions.
— Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York
I would stay in New York, I told him, just six months, and I could see the Brooklyn Bridge from my window. As it turned out the bridge was the Triborough, and I stayed eight years.
— Joan Didion
The city knows you better than any living person because it has seen you when you are alone.
— Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York
As if these daily humiliations and sacrifices mean something, are tallied by the ones who keep the books. Tomorrow we pick up where we left off. Sleep tight. Sleep deep. Sleep the sleep of the successful because somehow you made it through the day without anyone finding out that you are a complete fraud.
— Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York
I'm here because I was born here and thus ruined for anywhere else, but I don't know about you.
— Colson Whitehead
It dawned on me that no person is as poetically homesick as someone who has come to New York for the first time and glimpsed a small vestige of her home state.
— Suzanne Rindell, Three-Martini Lunch
Oh God. Goddammit. I never got to see the pyramids. Or the Taj Mahal. I ...I never even got to leave the country.""Don't sweat it, brother. You got to live in NYC. You didn't miss shit.
— Brian K. Vaughan
... I somehow got the idea that oak floors were located exclusively in New York City. This came chiefly from watching Woody Allen movies. I wanted to live someplace that looked like Mia Farrow's apartment in 'Hannah and Her Sisters' (little did I know that it was Mia Farrow's apartment). To me, this kind of space did not connote wealth. These were places where paint was peeling and the rugs were frayed, places where smart people sat around drinking gin and tonics, having interesting conversations, and living, according to my logic, in an authentic way.
— Meghan Daum
She had to get used to her new name, The Drummer. Twelfth, and last in line, but on a good note, she had the most money, and more importantly, she was alive.
— Dayna S. Rubin, The Capital Club
Why should anyone else have it easy. Spoken like a true New Yorker.
— Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York
Summoning my inner Kojak, I tried to convince myself that she would have sat next to me even had there been somewhere else on the bus to sit. Unfortunately, I didn't do a very good job of self-persuasion. Good thing I wasn't in court suing myself, because I would have lost. From: "My Best Valentine's Day.Ever: A Short Story
— Zack Love, Stories and Scripts: an Anthology
So I'm delighted to open up a bit about these particular details, in honor of Valentine's Day (when every balding, chubby, and short actuary wants people - especially the babes out there - to know about his studly past"From: "My Best Valentine's Day.Ever: a Short Story
— Zack Love, Stories and Scripts: an Anthology
This was getting uglier by the minute, I thought. There really was no easy escape, since we were sitting far from the exit and the waiters knew me from prior dinner dates with Ashley and I hadn't paid the tab yet. From: "My Worst Valentine's Day.Ever: a Short Story
— Zack Love, Stories and Scripts: an Anthology
Teddy was reminded of Paterson, but that polyglot population had appeared healthier, more hopeful, the American mood more fertile then in its promises, and the streets of Silk City with their little yards holding a fuchsia bush or a blue-robed plaster statue of the Virgin more livable than these stacked, stinking, ill-lit dens. He had been a part of the population then, a schoolboy immersed in its details of competition and expectation and childish collusion and hierarchy, alive in its struggle and too absorbed to judge or pity, whereas now he came upon it from outside, from above, as an agent of power and ownership, an enforcer and avenger, the representative of the system which squeezed the lowly by the same iron laws whereby it generation profits for the lucky and strong.
— John Updike, In the Beauty of the Lilies
And just as I'm about to lay on the Yi-Wang-Smooth, I see Lay #1 and Lay #3 show up to our table and take the two empty seats nearby. From: "My Worst Valentine's Day.Ever: a Short Story
— Zack Love, Stories and Scripts: an Anthology
Like a driver who has lost control of his vechicle, I was bracing for the impending crash."From: "My Worst Valentine's Day.Ever: a Short Story
— Zack Love, Stories and Scripts: an Anthology
Somewhere in the city, an orange cat finished chewing on a marjoram plant next to his studio apartment's door and leapt purring onto the shoulder of his owner, home early from work. Somewhere in the city, a young Chinese pianist sat down at a rehearsal hall and let his fingers play the first opening notes of the Emperor Concerto, notes that would envelop the small girl in row D of the Philharmonic that night in a shimmering cloud. A boy in Staten Island touched his finger to the lower back of the girl who had been just a friend until then. A woman in Hell's Kitchen stood in her dark attic garret, her paintbrush in hand, and stepped back from the painting of chartreuse highway and forest-green sky that had taken her two years to complete. A clerk in a Brooklyn bodega tapped her crimson fingernail on a box of gripe water, reassuring the new mother holding a wailing baby, and the mother's grateful smile almost made both of them cry themselves.
— Stephanie Clifford
If I could do all of that on February 14th, it would be a personal best for me. Something to share with my crew for the glory and the laughs, or to cheer up the next buddy of mine to get dumped or cheated on. From "My Worst Valentine's Day.Ever: A Short Story
— Zack Love, Stories and Scripts: an Anthology
There's nothing in this courtyard, after all, that wasn't here in 1977; maybe it's not this year but that one, and everything that follows is still to come ... For if the evidence points to anything, it's that there is no one unitary City. Or if there is, it's the sum of thousands of variations, all jockeying for the same spot. This may be wishful thinking; still, I can't help imagining that the points of contact between this place and my own lost city healed incompletely, left the scars I'm feeling for when I send my head up the fire escapes and toward the blue square of freedom beyond. And you out there: Aren't you somehow right here with me? I mean, who doesn't still dream of a world other than this one? Who among us--if it means letting go of the insanity, the mystery, the totally useless beauty of the million once-possible New Yorks--is ready even now to give up hope?
— Garth Risk Hallberg, City on Fire
Slowly the sky turned from the color of cornflower to that of hyacinth, and the Ferris wheel at Coney Island appeared like a ring of diamonds against the twilight. New York-that city made of canyons between tall buildings, and ornate houses filled with glittering things that might trap a girl forever-was nothing more than a few dots on an infinite landscape. The atmosphere was crystalline and afforded her a perfect view. Only from this place was she able to see how limited the city was, after everything, and how wide open the world could all of a sudden become.
— Anna Godbersen, Splendor
This isn’t Soviet Russia. This is America we’re talking about. For God’s sake, this is New York City.
— Garth Risk Hallberg, City on Fire
Did you really think I'd steer you wrong?" Then William pointed to the wide-open country beyond the next ridge. "New York's that way. My compass is unerring.
— Garth Risk Hallberg, City on Fire
New York City is legendary for sleeping around. There's hot tail everywhere and it's such a big city that two-timing and even three-timing is very doable, if you plan it right."From "My Worst Valentine's Day.Ever. (a Short Story)
— Zack Love, Stories and Scripts: an Anthology
Maybe the price of forgetting that even in America, even in New York City, when a man back home is talking, you better listen closely.
— Brian Koppelman
Maybe the price of forgetting that even in America, even in New York City, when a man from back home is talking, you better listen closely. (Dark City Lights)
— Brian Koppelman
A New York plate that said you die. (Dark City Lights)
— Ed Park
Everything is going as planned until I notice that Ashley has barely touched her wine glass or food after ordering the priciest bottle and several of the most expensive dishes on the menu.From "My Worst Valentine's Day.Ever: a Short Story
— Zack Love, Stories and Scripts: an Anthology
Sometimes we have to break down to break through.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
I think I was his lifeline too. We were both adrift in New Your City. We were both surrounded by so many people, but ultimately we were terribly alone. Until we found each other.
— Lauren Blakely, 21 Stolen Kisses
At chaos’ core lies the invitation.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
If you want it badly enough, it’s yours.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
The rest is just slow diminution and loss. A waning of the full and effulgent moon of my youth. Not that the bright light of my youth was anything to be proud of. I was a terrible person. I did unkind and sometimes illegal things. I treated women abominably. The remembrance of it causes me to flush with shame and to feel a tightening in my groin.It was a radiance without warmth, and I thought of nothing but myself in the brightness of the light. Now I try never to think of myself. I try not to think at all, not to dwell, but, sometimes, late at night, it all comes back to me, and I lose myself in the life that might have been, the wife of twenty years, her comforts and distractions. The fractious children, raucous at the holidays, with their tattoos you asked them not to get and their lacrosse sticks they play with in the house, stringing and restringing them, the trips to Paris to stay at the Lutetia. Photograph albums of a life that never quite came to be. It doesn’t last long when it comes, but it is vivid, and I am there, not here, not here where I belong. When you lose everything, you don’t die. You just continue in ordinary pants with nothing in your pockets.
— Robert Goolrick
Our lives follow the stories we tell ourselves.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
New insights from being present are a gift.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
Stay open. You may find your tribe where you least expect it.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
From the depths of your well, tap your will.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
Increase the number of adventures you act on and you’ll lighten the weight of regret.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
Those who receive the blessing are those who see beyond its disguise.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
No matter how many strikes are hurled at you, only you decide when you’re out.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
Endings are the embryos of new beginnings.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
If “Been there, done that” isn’t your mantra,then make haste down your “bucket list.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
An unlimited supply of wonder and trust, bolsters life lived as a process of discovery.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
No need to queue up
—  step forward and count yourself in.
Diving in IS testing the water.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
Go for it. It will make a great story.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
Manhattan is basically this island in New York, where all the cool stuff is located.
— Jason Medina, The Diary of Audrey Malone Frayer
Like flowers blooming through cement,we, too, can grow beyond our cracks.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
Twists, turns and double crosses in literary theft quickly expand to threaten the globe in: THE SLUSH PILE BRIGADE. At its core, the book is a solid thriller. It has clearly defined stakes and goals for the main characters. Marquis has laid the groundwork as a thriller writer and hopefully his following novels build up a James Patterson-esque empire. A promising debut from an up-and-coming thriller writer."----IndieReader - 4.5/5 Stars (****1/2)
— Indie Reader
Be who you are. You may not always please but you will never go wrong.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
Be courageous: be still.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
The ghosts of Manhattan are not the spirits of the propertied classes; these are entombed in their names, their works, their constructions. New York's ghosts are the unresting souls of the poor, the marginal, the dispossessed, the depraved, the defective, the recalcitrant. They are the guardian spirits of the urban wilderness in which they lived and died. Unrecognized by the history that is common knowledge, they push invisibly behind it to erect their memorials in the collective unconscious.
— Luc Sante
Real, but sometimes beautiful.
— Nancy Garden
Whether by plane, bus or carpet, own the magic in your ride.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
My main concern while in New York wasn't becoming a hot shot. I was more concerned with staying alive, and that took all the pleasure out of the experience. I didn't know where to find a grocery store so I subsisted on hot dogs, peanuts and whatever else I could buy from a street vendor. I didn't know how to hail a cab (apparently there's an art to it). I stood on the edge of the sidewalk and waved my arms around but no one stopped, so I limited my entire universe to however far I could walk and I never walked too far because I was afraid I'd get lost and never find my way back home again. Perhaps that's why there are so many homeless people in New York; maybe they're not really lost, maybe some of them have homes but they just don't know how to get there.
— Marlin Bressi, Blow Me: Hairy Adventures in the Salon Industry
If you built the box, you can also break it down.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
When life hands you lemons, why stop at lemonade? Create an entire product line.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
If it’s true we only live once, then raise your red velvet curtain every chance you get.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
Keep moving. Your next big thing may be just around the corner.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
Till your inner garden and your outer landscape will flourish
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
Give full attention to life’s moments and the images you capture will be everlasting.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls: Life Lessons From Solo Moments in New York
The adventures of a lifetime begin with “Yes.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
Whether you need to make a call or answer one,don’t put your passions on hold.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls: Life Lessons From Solo Moments in New York
Though I have not lived in New York City for more than two decades, these storytellers – from the United States, Britain and Canada – have touched my heart with their openness, inspired me with their joie de vivre and deepened my appreciation for my hometown as a worldwide phenomenon. Welcome to our New York.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls: Life Lessons From Solo Moments in New York
Fear not your flame as you flood your caverns with firelight.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
By necessity, we are direct and swift in speech and movement. This is the true dynamic that underlies our apocryphal rudeness. Also true: we do not make eye contact. Neither do we encourage it. Consider the number of humans a New Yorker will pass on a given day – on the subway, in a train or bus terminal, in an office or simply walking down the street. To facilitate speed and minimize drama, it’s productive to keep one’s eyes focused ahead.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
You’d be surprised who will back down when you speak up.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
For all the energy directed toward the stratagem of big city living, New Yorkers are never too distracted to respond to, and more often, proactively assist visitors. Tourists tracing the routes of subway maps with their fingers, squinting at street signs or staring at a slip of paper with confusion are typical recipients of our generosity. We know our city can be as challenging as it is fascinating, and we want visitors to have a good experience.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
No map? No problem. Let commitment and determination lead the way.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
I know when people think of New York, they think of theater, restaurants, cultural landmarks and shopping,” I told him. “But beyond the iconic skyline and the news from Wall Street, New York is a collection of villages. In our neighborhoods, we attend school, play Kick the Can, handball and ride our bikes. I grew up knowing the names and faces of the baker, the shoe repair family, the Knish man and the Good Humor man who sold me and the other kids in my neighborhood half a popsicle for a nickel. My father took me to the playground where he pushed me on the swing, helped balance me on the seesaw and watched as I hung upside down by my feet on the monkey bars. Yes,” I told the interviewer, “people actually grow up in New York.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
Ten years have passed and every day that I walk throughout the city, I feel honored to be a part of it - and atom in the blood of a beating heart belonging to the most wonderfully diverse, smart, creative, passionate being.
— Melisa Singh, I Am Here: The Untold Stories of Everyday People
Want more fizz in your life? Shake things up.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
Practice trust in small matters for huge returns in the large ones.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
Nothing is lost in a stumble, only in the refusal to get up.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
The alchemy of diamonds from the rough is to mine every moment.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
Experiment with grounding yourself with who you are, not what you do.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
Those who walk the talk get the work.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
As long as you’re breathing, it’s never too late to reconnect with a long-held love.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
If you’ve broken any promises you’ve made to yourself, now is the time to make up for it.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls:Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York
When you look for beauty, you usually end up finding it.From Central Park Song (A Screenplay)
— Zack Love, Stories and Scripts: an Anthology
Let the park live in you until it sings you a song.
— Zack Love, Stories and Scripts: an Anthology
All over the city lights were coming on in the purple-blue dusk. The street lights looked delicate and frail, as though they might suddenly float away from their lampposts like balloons. Long twirling ribbons of light, red, green, violet, were festooned about the doorways of drugstores and restaurants--and the famous electric signs of Broadway had come to life with glittering fish, dancing figures, and leaping fountains, all flashing like fire. Everything was beautiful. Up in the deepening sky above the city the first stars appeared white and rare as diamonds.
— Elizabeth Enright, The Saturdays
You might find me cleverly clad, in black on black, at 28th and 7th Ave.
— Jonathan P. Lamas, Sanctuary of Expression
VISIONS OF GRANDEURI'm walking through a sheet of glass instead of the door,Flying over a giant candlestick lighting up Central Park,Repeating two courses at Hard Knock's College,And swimming through the Red Sea with silky jelly fish.I'm hopping over an empty row house in Philadelphia,Getting a seventy dollar manicure on a gondola in Venice,Wearing a white pearl necklace stolen from Goodwill,And running my first New York City marathon.I'm discussing the meaning of life with my late cat Charlie.Dating John Doe- the thirty-third chef at the White House,Running non-stop on a broken leg through a bomb-blasted city,And keeping a multi-lingual monkey named Alfredo as my pet.I'm spying on two hundred and twenty-two homegrown terrorists from Iowa,Worshiped by a red-headed gorilla named Salamander,Sleeping with a giant teddy bear dressed in black leather,And wearing hot pink lipstick over a shade of midnight blue.
— Giorge Leedy, Uninhibited From Lust To Love
Meantime the Newspaper of Record goes around in a little pleated skirt shaking pompoms, leaping in the air with an idiot grin if so much as a cement mixer passes by.
— Thomas Pynchon, Bleeding Edge
There was Babylon and Nineveh; they were built of brick. Athens was gold marble columns. Rome was held up on broad arches of rubble. In Constantinople the minarets flame like great candles round the Golden Horn… Steel, glass, tile, concrete will be the materials of the skyscraper. Crammed on the narrow island the millionwindowed buildings will just glittering, pyramid on pyramid like the white cloudhead above a thunderstorm.
— John dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer
The beauty of New York rests on a completely different base. It's unintentional. It arose independent of human design, like a stalagmitic cavern. Forms which are in themselves quite ugly turn up fortuitously, without design, in such incredible surroundings that they sparkle with a sudden wondrous poetry.
— Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Look at it,' he said, gesturing. 'This window looks down upon hundreds more panes of glass, and behind those panes live thousands upon thousands of lost souls. When I feel cast down and helpless, scores of other men do as well, and when I am bitterly angry at feeling cast down and helpless, countless other people languish in concert with me. When I'm happy, it's the same. It's a bit like...I used to play chamber music. It's like a vast orchestra. And so I shan't ever be alone.
— Lyndsay Faye, Seven for a Secret
New York presented a paradox. While foreigners thought of New York has the symbol of America, many Americans viewed the city with some suspicion as the country's most foreign.
— Charles Emmerson, 1913: In Search of the World Before the Great War
New York is unruly, tangled. The city woos first, then mangles, then pastes back together in a fresh, dazzling mosaic.
— Elizabeth Winder, Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953
Did you go to the the theatre last time you were here?'No, it's too expensive.''What did you do?''What tourists always do in New York City. Empire State, Statue of and all the galleries. There's a million galleries.''Where'd you stay?''The first two nights, I slept in an abandoned car. A Pontiac Grand Am.' Weren't you scared?''Not really. It had a doorman.
— Sean Condon, Lonely Planet Journeys: Drive Thru America
There were a few nighttime pedestrians on the block, but they continued on their way, dutifully ignoring the zombie vomiting blood out of the back of my car. Good old New Yorkers. They really couldn't care less.
— Nicholas Kaufmann, Dying Is My Business
WHAT CAN YOU SPEND BUT YOU CAN NEVER GET BACK????TIME!CHOOSE HOW YOU SPEND YOUR TIME AND WHO YOU SPEND IT WITH WISELY.
— Qwana Reynolds-Frasier
In a supersonic jet, you'll land before you take off. Your watch - if it's working right - will go back. (It'll stop if it's not). You've made a journey forwards and backwards at the same time. The trip will make you younger.
— Zdeněk Mahler, Nowy Jork
Life is amazingly simplified,” she wrote in her journal, “now that the recalcitrant forsythia has at last decided to come and blurt out springtime in petalled fountains of yellow. In spite of reams of papers to be written, life has snitched a cocaine sniff of sun-worship and salt air, and all looks promising.” She already adored New York.
— Elizabeth Winder, Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953
I trust you above all others", he told her. "Above myself". She shook her head, but then leaned into him, as though taking shelter. He drew her close, the crown of her head beneath his cheek. Beyond the hansom's window, New York was an endless rhythm of walls and windows and doors, darkened alleys, flashes of sunlight. he thought, if he could pick a moment to be taken into the flask, a moment to live in endlessly, perhaps he would choose this one: the passing city, and the woman at his side.
— Helene Wecker, The Golem and the Jinni
Anyway, I think Florence and I noticed each other before the local train screeched to a halt at the 110th Street station, because as I boarded it felt as though we were supposed to step into the same car, and hold onto the same moist metal bar. My wishful hunch now seems confirmed by the way she's reading her Time magazine article next to me.
— Zack Love, City Solipsism: A Short Story
To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Polonius, you sometimes have to get your hands a little dirty to set things straight.
— Lynn Steward, A Very Good Life
Bernier turned in her chair, smiled, and shook their hands. Dana’s heart skipped a beat as she stood inches away from one of New York’s most glamorous and adored women.
— Lynn Steward, A Very Good Life
The woman was Diana Vreeland, the high priestess of fashion and legendary fashion editor of Harper’s Bazaar and editor-in-chief of Vogue. Dana paused, eyes wide. Well, perhaps she was a bit star-struck after all.
— Lynn Steward, A Very Good Life
You may discover that the very aspects which make it most unendurable are what gives New York its meaning. Its inconsistencies and anonymity, its seeming indifference to you and every other individual is really what makes it a safe haven for individuals everywhere (Maeve Brennan)
— Elizabeth Winder, Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953
Dana’s window? More like her snow globe, Janice thought. She pictured Dana standing in a tiny glass-enclosed world, snow gently falling around her. Her world could be shaken but never broken. She was far too insulated.
— Lynn Steward, A Very Good Life
Meanwhile the temperature is getting hotter and hotter so no one can think clearly. No one perceives. No one cares. Insane madness come out like life is a terrific party.
— Kathy Acker, Eurydice in the Underworld
Dana daydreamed of one day being able to set her agenda at B.Altman with the same courage and tenacity as the woman who was now driving the VW while speaking animatedly about her travel plans for the near future. She would be journeying to India in search of exotic merchandise for the store’s Indian extravaganza, a lavish event planned by Ira Neimark and Dawn Mello to compete with Bloomingdale’s Retailing as Theater movement. The movement was the brainchild of Bloomingdale’s Marvin Traub, who staged elaborate presentations such as China: Heralding the Dawn of a New Era. Typical extravaganzas featured fashion, clothing, food, and art from various regions of the world.“I’ll bring back enough items to make Bloomingdale’s blush!” Nina said confidently. “And I’m not just talking sweaters, hats, and walking sticks. I’ll stop first in the Himalayas and prowl the Landour Bazaar.”Lynn Steward ~ A Very Good Life
— Lynn Steward, A Very Good Life
Andrew laughed at the use of the word “theater.” “B.Atlman will have plenty of theater on Monday,” he said, “when Estée Lauder arrives to secure a prime location in the new cosmetic department. I was told on Friday that she intends to bring along her husband, Joseph, as well as her sons, Leonard and Ronald, to make sure she gets exactly what she wants.”	Nina laughed loudly. “Oh, she’ll get what she wants all right. She’s a determined woman.” She glanced sideways at Dana. “And we know what a determined woman can accomplish, don’t we?”	“Yes, we do,” Dana replied. In Nina’s presence, the restrictions imposed by Bea and Helen seemed almost trivial. Dana had experienced a single setback, but Nina was a reminder of what real determination and enthusiasm could accomplish.	“Her reputation precedes her,” Andrew said. “Ira already told me to give Ms. Lauder whatever she wants.”	“Sounds like a done deal,” Dana said.	“That’s why there’s going to be a little drama on Monday,” Andrew said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. “The space she wants has already been promised to Charles of the Ritz.
— Lynn Steward
What I love about New York: the faster and more recklessly my cab driver drives the safer and all around better I feel.
— Gregor Collins, The Accidental Caregiver: How I Met, Loved, and Lost Legendary Holocaust Refugee Maria Altmann
There was some kind of scuffle two hundred yards down the street, again strangely noiseless, and a huddled knot of men opened up to reveal two brawlers being separated and pulled away from their fight. What I saw next gave me a fright: in the farther distance, beyond the listless crowd, the body of a lynched man dangling from a tree. The body was slender, dressed from head to toe in black, reflecting no light. It soon resolved itself, however, into a less ominous thing: dark canvas sheeting on a construction scaffold, twirling in the wind.
— Teju Cole, Open City
Fuck the Bureau! Their entire outfit is half the size of the NYPD. I've got more officers who speak Arabic in one precinct that you guys have in the entire D.O.D.!
— Brian K. Vaughan, Ex Machina, Vol. 4: March to War
One of my favorite things to do is put my headphones on,blast some good music and just walk my own personal music video
— Donal O'Callaghan
If "Sex and the City" taught us anything, it's that Paris is the only city in the world that New Yorkers actually fantasize about.
— Elizabeth Bard, Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, with Recipes
That's the problem with being born in New York, the old newsman observed a little sadly. You've got no New York to run away to.
— Amor Towles, Rules of Civility
How about a drop of something to cut the phlegm?Why don't you stay sober today?We didn't come to New York to stay sober.
— Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man
His laugh and his voice were both pleasant. He talked the way New Yorkers used to talk before they learned to talk Flatbush.
— Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
Everyone in New York City thinks they are famous without being famous.
— Ethan H. Minsker
I'm an urban New Yorker to the last molecule.
— Robert Silverberg, Dying Inside
Oh, Williamsburg. There was a point when you seemed like a scary, tough neighborhood, but now it's obvious that the graffiti on your walls gets put there by art students.
— Imogen Binnie, Nevada
In the 1970s in New York everyone slept till noon.
— Edmund White, City Boy: My Life in New York in the 1960s and 70s
Ever since, New York has existed for me simultaneously as a map to be learned and a place to aspire too--a city of things and a city of signs, the place I actually am and the place I would like to be even when I am here. As a kid, I grasped that the skyline was a sign that could be, so to speak, relocated to New Jersey--a kind of abstract, receding Vision whose meaning would always be "out of reach," not a concrete thing signifying "here you are." Even when we are established here, New York still seems a place we aspire to. Its life is one thing--streets and hot dogs and brusqueness--and its symbols, the lights across the way, the beckoning skyline, are another. We go on being inspired even when we're most exasperated.
— Adam Gopnik, Through the Children's Gate: A Home in New York
I remember looking out the window of the little maid's room where we had been installed, seeing the lights of the Palisades across the way, and thinking, There! There it is! There's New York, this wonderful city, I'll go live there someday. Even being in New York, the actual place, I found the idea of New York so wonderful that I could only imagine it as some other place, greater than any place that would let me sleep in it--a distant constellation of lights I had not yet been allowed to visit. I had arrived in Oz only to think, Well, you don't LIVE in Oz, do you?
— Adam Gopnik, Through the Children's Gate: A Home in New York
If you think you’ll find intellectual stimulation, you’re thinking of another era. The conversations are invariably about money or property or schools. I’ve never been more bored by casual chat.
— Andrew Sullivan
Nothing can prepare the uninitiated for New York City.
— Therese Anne Fowler, Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald
New York is the concentrate of art and commerce and sport and religion and entertainment and finance, bringing to a single compact arena the gladiator, the evangelist, the promoter, the actor, the trader and the merchant. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.
— E.B. White
It was a grungy, dangerous, bankrupt city without normal services most of the time. The garbage piled up and stank during long strikes of the sanitation workers. A major blackout led to days and days of looting. We gay guys wore whistles around our necks so we could summon help from other gay men when we were attacked on the streets by gangs living in the projects between Greenwich Village and the West Side leather bars...The upside was that the city was inexpensive…
— Edmund White, City Boy: My Life in New York in the 1960s and 70s
I love you because Five floor walk up1 to the 2 to the EThree avenues
— Darnell Lamont Walker
In Washington Square, one could still feel the characters of Henry James and the presence of the author himself. Entering the perimeters of the white arch, one was greeted by the sounds of bongos and acoustic guitars, protest singers, political arguments, activists leafleting, older chess players challenged by the young. This open atmosphere was something I had not experienced, simple freedom that did not seem to be oppressive to anyone.
— Patti Smith Just Kids
We thought of [New York] as a free city, like one of those storied prewar tropical nests of intrigue and licentiousness where exiles and lamsters and refugees found shelter in a tangle of improbable juxtapositions.
— Luc Sante, Kill All Your Darlings: Pieces 1990-2005
The streets of New York and some wards of its venerable institutions were packed with people who, despite being entirely forsaken, had episodes of glory that made the career of Alexander the Great seem like a day in the life of a file clerk.
— Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale
Every great wave of popular passion that rolls up on the prairies is dashed to spray when it strikes the hard rocks of Manhattan.
— H.L. Mencken
That's the problem with living in New York. You've got no New York to run away to.
— Amor Towles, Rules of Civility
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
She loved the way her city always sounded like it was celebrating.
— Sarah Pekkanen, These Girls
That's how quickly New York City comes about - like a weather wane - or the head of a cobra. Time tells which.
— Amor Towles, Rules of Civility
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. Whereas other cities flaunt there history - their presumed glory - in vividly placed monuments, squares, parks, plaques, and boulevards, such history as New York has been unable entirely to obliterate is to be found, mainly, in the backwaters of Wall Street, in the goat tracks of Old and West Broadway, in and around Washington Square, and, for the relentless searcher, in grimly inaccessible regions of The Bronx.
— James     Baldwin, Just Above My Head
In New York, the buildings are like mountains in some ways, but they are only alive because of the people living in them. Real mountains are alive all over.
— Silas House, Same Sun Here