Quotes About New Yorkers

“True New Yorkers do not really seek information about the outside world. They feel that if anything is not in New York it is not likely to be interesting.”

— Jimmy Breslin

“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

“The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more. I Am Not A Virginian, But An American!”

— Patrick Henry

“New York is Babylon : Brooklyn is the truly Holy City.
New York is the city of envy, office work, and hustle;
Brooklyn is the region of homes and happiness ... .
There is no hope for New Yorkers, for their glory in
Their skyscraping sins; but in Brooklyn there is the wisdom of the lowly.”

— Christopher Morley

“So you got the cool New Yorkers, and then there are the less-than-cool New Yorkers.”

— Edward Burns

“Greenwich Village always had its share of mind readers, but there are many more these days, and they seem to have moved closer to the mainstream of life in the city. What was crazy 10 years ago is now respectable, even among the best-educated New Yorkers.”

— Aravind Adiga

“I can't wait for summer in the city! I love all the free activities in the parks that become available to us New Yorkers. Yoga and movie screenings in Bryant Park, concerts in Central Park - there's so much more available to the New York community in the summer! And everyone just seems to smile more.”

— Kara Lindsay

“The language spoken by New Yorkers was changing almost daily. Phrases culled from British thieves' cant intermingled with German, Dutch, Yiddish, and other immigrant languages to form "flash," a”

— Lyndsay Faye

“My dream is not Hollywood, but to perform my act in English to 30 people in a Soho comedy club, to show New Yorkers what they look like from the French point of view.”

— Gad Elmaleh

“As N.Y.C. Public Advocate, I released a report that showed that stop-and-frisks of African Americans in 2012 were barely half as likely to yield a weapon as those of white New Yorkers - and a third less likely to yield contraband. Despite this evidence, the vast majority of those stopped are young black and Latino men.”

— Bill De Blasio

“I think that most New Yorkers would object to calling me a New Yorker. I didn't grow up here.”

— Sloane Crosley

“My apartment is the equivalent of one room in my Toronto home. Now I understand why New Yorkers are on the streets at all hours. People don't want to stay inside for fear they'll go crazy.”

— Samantha Bee

“New Yorkers, I figured, just pretended to be unfriendly.”

— Jeannette Walls

“The most divisive issue facing New Yorkers in 2013 is stop and frisk, a tactic used by law enforcement to stop, question, and frisk people suspected of a crime.”

— Sal Albanese

“On the 11th anniversary of 9/11, it is some consolation that the man most responsible for that terrible morning will not be smiling smugly to himself as satellite TV brings to the leafy boulevards of Abbottabad the somber images of New Yorkers commemorating those who perished in the Twin Towers.”

— Bobby Ghosh

“It was an incredible resource. I'd sit with a big stack of bound New Yorkers in the library and read through, especially the 'Talk of the Town' sections.”

— Michael Chabon

“People say that New Yorkers aren't friendly, but I think they're more friendly than Londoners. Here there is a front-footed nature of Americans. You can go out on a night out and meet 10 random people and stay in touch with them, whereas that's not going to happen in the same way in London.”

— Theo James

“Anytime four New Yorkers get into a cab together without arguing, a bank robbery has just taken place.”

— Johnny Carson

“There's that stigma about New Yorkers, how they're so mean, but in my experience it was quite the opposite. People were very genuine and very nice, even on the subway.”

— Taylor Kitsch

“New Yorkers, by reputation, are fast-talking, assertive and easily annoyed; I fit right in.”

— Jane Pauley

“'All In' is like the Giants motto, so I kind of took that, and I kind of used New York as the backdrop - how diehard New Yorkers are for their team. Me being a New Yorker, I just had to show my love for the city as well as my love for the New York Giants.”

— Travie McCoy

“New Yorkers love it when you spill your guts out there. Spill your guts at Wimbledon and they make you stop and clean it up.”

— Jimmy Connors

“I do love to walk around in New York because people will notice me, smile, but they never bother anyone. New Yorkers are very cool. I love New York.”

— Creed Bratton

“My parents were New Yorkers, and I was conceived in Los Angeles. My father was a makeup artist to Clint Eastwood and Richard Chamberlain.”

— Michele Lee

“New Yorkers have their own way of speaking, their own tempo, and Texans are a lot like that. As much as you think Texas is one thing and New York is another, they're very much the same.”

— Jerry Jeff Walker

“New Yorkers should know that no one in the Administration, at the Department of Defense, or at the Selective Service System is advocating the reinstatement of the mandatory draft in any form.”

— Jim Walsh

“I would not waste time, as Senator Gillibrand does, on things such as dictating a national minimum driving age and sponsoring a 'National Day of Play.' I'd help New Yorkers understand that we get less in value from Washington than what we send there in taxes.”

— Wendy E. Long

“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

“I eat out three times a day most days of the year. This is no big deal to most New Yorkers, and it is not something I am necessarily proud of - it's simply the nature of my itinerant life.”

— Ben Elliot

“There is an inherent hope and positive drive to New Yorkers.”

— John Oliver

“Yet, as only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you'll live through the night.”

— Dorothy Parker

“I'm tough, and you know what? New Yorkers deserve that. They work head, they fight it out, they slug it out. And they deserve a mayor or a speaker who's going to do the same.”

— Christine Quinn

“I think that Shake Shack wouldn't exist had it not been for Twitter. I don't think you would have gotten a hundred New Yorkers to stand in line for an hour if they couldn't have made their time really productive and organized snowball fights, ordered free hot chocolate, and, you know, Instagrammed photos.”

— Danny Meyer

“If you aren't born here, to be a real New Yorker, you have to bring your talent, be a successful mentor, and support the New Yorkers who made the city by giving back.”

— Daniel Boulud

“Why, I've seen Kentuckians who hated whiskey, Virginians who weren't descended from Pocahontas, Indianians who hadn't written a novel, Mexicans who didn't wear velvet trousers with silver dollars sewed along the seams, funny Englishmen, spendthrift Yankees, cold-blooded Southerners, narrow- minded Westerners, and New Yorkers who were too busy to stop for an hour on the street to watch a one-armed grocer's clerk do up cranberries in paper bags. Let a man be a man and don't handicap him with the label of any section.”

— O. Henry

“Violent cities, people who live in violent cities, find a way - as New Yorkers did 30 or 40 years ago - they find a way to just carry on. But you're stressed out. You're worried, you know.”

— Mohsin Hamid

“Ideas matter in New York. I am certain that more conversations in New York are about ideas than anywhere else. Not just vague theories, but ideas that New Yorkers have the will, and the clout, to do something about.”

— David Frost

“There seems to be less obvious corruption in city government and New York politicians, they aren't Republican or Democrat, they're New Yorkers.”

— Malachy McCourt

“When I first arrived (in New York), it seemed to me the most terrifying city in the world ... all those big buildings. I remember walking on Broadway, looking up at this huge, mountainous place-and being so lonely. But things started to clear up when I met a few people on the street whom I'd met before-all of a sudden there got to be a certain familiarity about the place, and the terror kind of evaporated. There was a lot of playing going on, and the New Yorkers, of course, were a completely different crowd from what I'd known.”

— Benny Goodman

“I was a make believe ethnographer: treating New Yorkers like an explorer would treat Zulus - searching for the rawest snapshot, the zero degree of photography.”

— William Klein

“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

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

— Katharine Brush

“It's a dirty little secret that most New Yorkers are pleasant, thoughtful, patient, and polite. The Chamber of Commerce must work overtime to maintain the surly, off-putting image that is widely believed to define the city. In truth, niceness is nearly epidemic in this town.”

— Judith Kelman

“Peaceful New Yorkers, pls refute the Ground Zero mosque plan if you believe catastrophic pain caused @ Twin Towers site is too raw, too real.”

— Sarah Palin

“A New York doctor has finished a five year study on what smells have the biggest effect on New Yorkers. The smell New Yorkers like the most: vanilla. The smell New Yorkers like the least: New Jersey.”

— Jay Leno

“The reason to drive this point home with a vivid and frank comparison is many New Yorkers are still not confronting the reality of how serious our crisis is. It was an exhortation to face reality.”

— Eliot Spitzer

“Hip hop started in NY so it's important that New Yorkers realise that to talk about NY music and its sound should not be a small-minded conversation. Music is supposed to evolve. It's supposed to be going through changes, it's not supposed to sound exactly the same as what it did when it started. NY hip hop has to be allowed to move on and grow and expand.”

— Nas

“New Yorkers, we've seen Donald Trump for, like, 30 years; we know who he is. So he wasn't a surprise to me.”

— Fran Lebowitz

“When a village ceases to be a community, it becomes oppressive in its narrow conformity. So one becomes an individual and migrates to the city. There, finding others like-minded, one re-establishes a village community. Nowadays only New Yorkers are yokels.”

— Paul Goodman

“New Yorkers are so impersonal, if it wasn't for muggings there wouldn't be any contact at all!”

— Robert Orben