Bob Blaisdell - New York: The Big Apple Quote Book

New York

THE BIG APPLE
QUOTE BOOK

New York

THE BIG APPLE
QUOTE BOOK

EDITED BY BOB BLAISDELL

DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

MINEOLA, NEW YORK

Copyright

Copyright 2011 by Dover Publications, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Bibliographical Note

New York: The Big Apple Quote Book is a new work, first published by Dover Publications, Inc., in 2011.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

New York : the Big Apple quote book / edited by Bob Blaisdell.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

eISBN-13: 978-0-486-32050-2

1. New York (N.Y.)Quotations, maxims, etc. 2. Quotations, English. 3. Quotations. I. Blaisdell, Robert.

PN6084.N38N48 2011

974.7'1dc22

2011010619

Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation

47866101

www.doverpublications.com

C ONTENTS

I NTRODUCTION

Even before moving to New York City, I was dreaming about New York, reading about New York. Joseph Mitchells The Bottom of the Harbor was a particular favorite. From rivermen to rat-catchers, everyone had a big personality; everyone was interesting and knowledgeable. Yes, Mitchell may be about the best New Yorker writer ever, but he really saw something, he caught something: The rats of New York are quicker-witted than those on farms, and they can outthink any man who has not made a study of their habits. The people (and animals!) Mitchell profiled had a tough and ready character I envied and admired. As a new New Yorker, I devoured first-hand accounts about the Big Apple experience, especially about the subway, which for me represented the glory of New York. As Lawrence Block says, Writers who dont take the subway? They must be out of their minds. To ride the subway was (and still is) to be expectant, alert, and excited.

For this collection, I gave myself up to the pleasures of quoting from fine and famous and handy books and articles; I selected those sentiments that seemed striking, witty and, if not true, then at least absolutely, ruthlessly sincere. That quoteI would thinkthat characterizes New York: It is one of the oldest places in the United States, but doesnt live in retrospect like the professionally picturesque provinces, observed the great A. J. Liebling. Any city may have one period of magnificence, like Boston or New Orleans or San Francisco, but it takes a real one to keep renewing itself until the past is perennially forgotten. And then what about this one, in the paper just the other day: There are 1,289 pages in The Encyclopedia of New York City, and not a single entry is devoted to toll plazas. They set the gruff, egalitarian tone of the city: Everyone waits, everyone pays (excellent, Mr. Manny Fernandez!). A visiting missionary, way back in 1679, had an experience that is so marvelous its unimaginable: In passing through this island we sometimes encountered such a sweet smell in the air that we stood still. Unimaginable? Imagine this: nowadays, I occasionally catch myself coming to a standstill on the busy sidewalks of Manhattan, captivated by such a sweet smell that only after a moment do I realize it emanates from one of those sidewalk carts peddling copper-pot honey-roasted nuts.

As for my unfortunate misquotations, misattrib utions, and typographical errors, I blush and apologize. Write and correct me, please. A fabulous quote that somebody else collected I usually reference simply to the quote-finder and not to the original source, and I often, but could not always, note the year the statement was made. As for the arrangement of the quotations within the sections, they are usually loosely chronological, with occasional reordering for emphasis, thematic unity, or contrast.

I am not done looking for quotes. There are so many good books about New York and New Yorkers and New York-ness that I havent yet read, that I hope in the afterlife there are libraries (and subway trains on which I can ride while I read). So I thank the librarians at the New York Public Library and Columbias Butler Library for providing me with books and sources; and I also thank, historically speaking, John Manbeck, my mentor in all things Brooklyn. For the writers and speakers and quotation-compilers whose sparkling words I have quoted, I offer the deepest appreciation for their illuminating observations of the Big Apple.

Bob Blaisdell

February 2010

New York

THE BIG APPLE
QUOTE BOOK

I f the planet grows cold, this city will nevertheless have been mankinds warmest moment.

Paul Morand (1929)

I love New York. How could I not love a city that contains both Grays Papaya and the Brooklyn Bridge? But maybe I too have been stuck in this bad marriage too long, hopelessly in love not with the city, the hard economic realities of it, the years of being part of the crowd, but with the skyline, that suggestion in lights that this place is both unreachable and a goal. That it is, in short, poetry. That is the city that pulls me, the city I carry around in my head.

Elizabeth Gold

To say that New York came up to its advance billing would be the baldest of understatements. Being there was like being in heaven without going to all the bother and expense of dying.

P. G. Wodehouse

The beautiful city, the city of hurried and sparkling waters! the city of spires and masts!

The city nested in bays! my city!

The city of such women, I am mad with them! I will return after death to be with them!

The city of such young men, I swear I cannot live happy, without I often go talk, walk, eat, drink, sleep, with them!

Walt Whitman

... I was in love with New York. I do not mean love in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and never love anyone quite that way again.

Joan Didion

If Paris is the setting for a romance, New York is the perfect city in which to get over one, to get over anything. Here the lost douceur de vivre is forgotten and the intoxication of living takes over.

Cyril Connolly

But, ah! Manhattans sights and sounds, her smells

Her crowds, her throbbing force, the thrill that comes

From being of her a part, her subtle spells, her slums

Oh God! the stark unutterable pity,

To be dead, and never again behold my city!

James Weldon Johnson

... the great place of the western continent, the heart, the brain, the focus, the main spring, the pinnacle, the extremity, the no more beyond, of the New World.

Walt Whitman

Of course Ill return to New York. Its my home. Is there any place else? Id rather be a lamppost on Seventh Avenue than a queen in another country.

Grace Watson (1971)

Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion.

E. B. White (1949)

New York cannot help but stand as a special order: the place which is not wilderness, the place of light and warmth and the envelopment of the human swarm, the place in which everyone is awake and laughing at three in the morning.