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If you find a quote relating to New York or New York City, please add it in to circulation within the portal. Here are some instructions:

  • Make sure the place you found it is reliable
  • Make sure it is not a controversial quote, such quotes may be removed at whim if deemed inappropriate
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  • Accompany it with a freely-licensed image if possible
  • Update this list accordingly

For easiness, please use the layout template, Portal:New York/Selected quote/Layout.

Quotes in rotation

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David Letterman entertaining troops in Iraq
Traffic signals in New York are just rough guidelines.

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Douglas Adams signing books at ApacheCon 2000
Man has always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much...the wheel, New York, wars and so on...while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man...for precisely the same reason.

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New York is a woman, holding, according to history, a rag called liberty with one hand, and strangling the eart with the other.
Adunis

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Thomas Wolfe in 1937
One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years

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New York's such a wonderful city. Although I was at the library today. The guys are very rude. I said, "I'd like a card." He says, "You have to prove you're a citizen of New York." So I stabbed him.

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Jay Leno in 2005.
The crime problem in New York is getting really serious. The other day the Statue of Liberty had both hands up.
Jay Leno

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A portrait of Mark Twain.
In Boston they ask, how much does he know? In New York, how much is he worth? In Philadelphia, who were his parents?

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Sarah Jessica Parker in New York City in 2006.
That's another reason I love New York. Just like that, it can go from bad to cute.

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Every person on the streets of New York is a type. The city is one big theater where everyone is on display.

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I miss New York. I still love how people talk to you on the street - just assault you and tell you what they think of your jacket.
Madonna

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Henry Louis Mencken, a 20th century journalist and social critc.
"New York: A third-rate Babylon."

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That particular sense of sacred rapture men say they experience in contemplating nature- I've never received it from nature, only from. Buildings, Skyscrapers. I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pest-hole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window - no, I don't feel how small I am - but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would like to throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.
Ann Rand

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I went to see a band in New York. The lead singer got on the microphone, and he said How many of you people feel like human beings tonight? Then he said How many of you feel like animals? And everyone cheered after the animals part. But the thing is, I cheered after the human being part because I did not know that there was a second part to the question.

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People come up to me and say "you know, if you stopped smoking, you'd get your sense of smell back." I live in New York City, I don't want my sense of smell back. Is that urine? (sniffs) I think I smell a dead fella! Where's that coming fro- look honey, a dead fella!" I found him, thank God I quit smoking, I can find dead fellas in puddles of urine. I love living in New York.

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Manhattan. Sometimes from beyond the skyscrapers, across of thousands of high walls, the cry of a tugboat finds you in your insomnia in the middle of the night, and you remember that this desert of iron and cement is an island.

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O. Henry (real name: William Sydney Porter) in his thirties.
It couldn't have happened anywhere but in little old New York.
O. Henry

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Skill is successfully walking a tightrope between the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center. Intelligence is not trying.

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New York: the only city where people make radio requests like "This is for Tina - I'm sorry I stabbed you.

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Bette Midler backstage at the Grammy Awards, February 1990.
When it's three o'clock in New York, it's still 1938 in London.

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Sarah Jessica Parker in New York City in 2003.
They say life's what happens when you're busy making other plans. But sometimes in New York, life is what happens when you're waiting for a table.