New Yorkers Quotes

• The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.

  John Updike

  New York, Believe, People

  FaceBook post by John Updike from Dec 31, 2013

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• There is something in the New York air that makes sleep useless.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Travel, New York, Sleep

  Simone de Beauvoir (2000). “America Day by Day”, p.18, Univ of California Press

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• 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

  New York, Moving, Cities

  "Late Show with David Letterman", February 9, 1984.

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• Everybody ought to have a lower East Side in their life.

  Irving Berlin

  Music, New York, East Berlin

  "Vogue" Magazine, November 1, 1962.

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• I love New York, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it.

  Truman Capote

  New York, House, Tree

  Truman Capote (2012). “Breakfast at Tiffany's”, p.84, Vintage

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

  Russell Baker

  Running, New York, Cities

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• New York is an exciting town where something is happening all the time, most unsolved.

  Johnny Carson

  Funny, Time, New York

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• Traffic signals in New York are just rough guidelines.

  David Letterman

  Funny, Sarcastic, New York

  "Late Show with David Letterman",

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• I'm a New Yorker, and I jaywalk with the best of them.

  Sonia Sotomayor

  Sonia Sotomayor (2013). “My Beloved World”, Vintage

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• At first, writing for The New Yorker was very scary to me. I couldn't imagine anything that I would write in that typeface.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Scary, Firsts

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• A friend said to me I'm like a walking New Yorker article. It's true! That's how I write. That's how I think.

  Jose Antonio Vargas

  Writing, Thinking, Said

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• When the New Yorker turned down work, they turned it down in such an elaborately gentlemanly way making apologies for their own shortsightedness. Undoubtedly it was their fault but somehow for some reason this fell short of the remarkably high standard that you by your own work have set for yourself. They had a way of rejecting my work that made me feel sorry for them somehow.

  Garrison Keillor

  Sorry, Apology, Way

  "Humor has to surprise us, otherwise it isn't funny". Interview with George Plimpton, blankonblank.org. November 28, 1994.

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• My parents put the New Yorker in my crib. I saw Vogue and Vanity Fair around the house before I could read.

  Richard Avedon

  Vanity, House, Parent

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• I love the honesty of New Yorkers. When a New Yorker says 'let's do lunch,' they actually mean it. In L.A., when they say 'let's do lunch,' they're just trying to say good-bye.

  Sherri Shepherd

  Goodbye, Honesty, Mean

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• New Yorkers are nice about giving you street directions; in fact, they seem quite proud of knowing where they are themselves.

  Katharine Brush

  Travel, Nice, Home

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• A natural New Yorker is a native of the present tense.

  V. S. Pritchett

  Natural, Tense, Native

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• I think I became a better writer after I started writing for the New Yorker. Well, I know I did. And part of it was having my New Yorker editor and part of it is that was when I started really going on tour and reading things in front of an audience 30 times and then going back in the room and rewriting it and reading it and rewriting it. So you really get the rhythm of the sentences down and you really get the flow down and you get rid of stuff that's not important.

  David Sedaris

  Reading, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.usatoday.com

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• If sometimes there seems to be a sort of sameness of sound in The New Yorker, it probably can be traced to the magazine's copydesk, which is a marvelous fortress of grammatical exactitude and stylish convention.

  E. B. White

  Sound, Magazines, Sometimes

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• I am a New Yorker, one; I'm an artist, two; I'm a woman, three.

  Laurie Anderson

  Artist, Two, Three

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• I'm not a New Yorker. I grew up in Detroit. A lot of people think it's one big city but they're completely different.

  Mike Binder

  Thinking, Cities, People

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• I lived in New York my whole life. Like every New Yorker, I have stories about spending summers on the Jersey shore, riding the roller coaster in Seaside that is now famous for that sickening photo of it being washed out to sea.

  Marissa Jaret Winokur

  Summer, New York, Sea

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• I realize that for many New Yorkers, this is the first time you've heard my name, and you don't know much about me. Over these next two years you will get to know me, but more importantly, I will get to know you.

  Kirsten Gillibrand

  Years, Names, Two

  Press Conference With New York Governor David Paterson And Senator-Designate Kirsten Gillibrand, Albany, NY, votesmart.org. January 23, 2009.

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• Life is a campus: in a Greenwich Village bookstore, looking for a New Yorker collection, I asked of an earnest-looking assistant where I might find the humour section. Peering over her granny glasses, she enquired, "Humour studies would that be, sir?"

  Keith Waterhouse

  Funny, Humor, Glasses

  The Spectator, January 15, 1994.

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• I think in terms of being a New Yorker, as my friends would say, I don't take a lot of mess. I have no tolerance for people who are not thinking deeply about things. I have no tolerance for the kind of small talk that people need to fill silence. And I have no tolerance for people not - just not being a part of the world and being in it and trying to change it.

  Jacqueline Woodson

  Thinking, People, Silence

  "Jacqueline Woodson On Growing Up, Coming Out And Saying Hi To Strangers". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. June 19, 2015.

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• I feel like I'm a New Yorker to the bone. But there is a lot of the South in me. I know there is a lot of the South in my mannerisms. There's a lot of the South in my expectations of other people and how people treat each other. There's a lot of the South in the way I speak, but it could never be home.

  Jacqueline Woodson

  Home, Expectations, People

  "Jacqueline Woodson On Growing Up, Coming Out And Saying Hi To Strangers". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. December 20, 2014.

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