New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous.
But there is one thing about it - once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough.

Once you have lived in New York and made it your home, no place else is good enough

Yeah, I don't think you can live anywhere else -- it's such a great city [New York]. L.A. is kind of a necessary evil, but man, I love going back to New York.

New York is like my dream city. That's where I'm going to live, I'm convinced of it.

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.

You don't have to be born in New York City to be a New Yorker. You have to live here for six months. And if at the end of the six months you walk faster, you talk faster, you think faster, you're a New Yorker.

I loved New York and my friends, but something within me kept saying it was not right yet. However, this time things were different. I had never felt such clear support from within, and it was not just support. It felt like a clear instruction: “The next step is NYC.

So complete is each neighborhood, and so strong the sense of neighborhood, that many a New Yorker spends a lifetime within the confines of an area smaller than a country village. Let him walk two blocks from his corner and he is in a strange land and will feel uneasy till he gets back.

We've shown the world that New York can never be defeated, because of its dynamic and diverse population and because it embodies the spirit of enterprise and the love of liberty. And because no matter who you are, if you believe in yourself and your dream, New York will always be the place for you.

On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy. It is this largess that accounts for the presence within the city’s walls of a considerable section of the population; for the residents of Manhattan are to a large extent strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere and come to town, seeking sanctuary or fulfillment or some greater or lesser grail. The capacity to make such dubious gifts is a mysterious quality of New York. It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.

You know what’s great about New York? The threshold for citizenship as a New Yorker is actually pretty short. If you come to New York and you still like it two years after you arrived here, and you still think it’s great and you’re having a good time and you haven’t been just totally ground down and go limping back to wherever the fuck you came from, you know what? You’re in!

New York is part of the natural world. I love the city, I love the country, and for the same reasons. The city is part of the country. When I had an apartment on East Forty-Eighth Street, my backyard during the migratory season yielded more birds than I ever saw in Maine.

I am inspired by New York...

I really love the city and would always love to go home. I do fear coming home and do not feel safe coming back. It’s just not the same place that I grew up in.