Casey Affleck Quotes

She missed the built environment of New York City. It was only in an urban landscape, amid straight lines and architecture, that she could situate herself in human time and history. She missed people. She missed human intrigue, drama and power struggles. She needed her own species, not to talk to, necessarily, but just to be among, as a bystander in a crowd or an anonymous witness.

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.

I always give respect to and pay homage to New York, because I don't feel like I would be the player that I am today if it wasn't for New York City. It gives you a certain edge, a certain toughness just growing up in the city.

I grew up in New York where there is such a different variety of people.

The most beautiful as well as the most ugly inclinations of man are not part of a fixed biologically given human nature, but result from the social process which creates man.

The biggest difference between L.A. and Edmonton was that instead of people looking at me I was looking at them.

I always miss New York when I leave it.

If I could live anywhere else in the world, I would probably want a place back in New York.

It was so interesting going to high school in New York. You get a callous to the city and an empathy for every type of person.

Growing up in New York, there are a lot of tenement buildings and a lot of projects. You don't leave your projects too much. The laundry's there. The grocery store is there. Everything takes place right there. When I got knowledge of myself and thought about moving around the city, hip-hop was something that helped me.

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.

One of those out-of-the-ordinary days that made sense of the slew of ordinary days. New York had a way of doing that. Every now and then the city shook its soul out. It assailed you with an image, or a day, or a crime, or a terror, or a beauty so difficult to wrap your mind around that you had to shake your head in disbelief.

In New York the acoustics are good for laughter, for life is all external, all action, no thought, no meditation, no dreaming, no reflection, only the exuberance of action.

In New York there's a lot of interstitial spaces; spaces in between spaces, where you're changing, and New York gives you the anonymity to be who you want to be.

People had said to me New York is kind of cutthroat and people walk past you on the street. I find it the opposite. I find that people want to talk.

I walk a lot in New York, not for the exercise but to get from place to place, and because it's the way of having the least contact with human beings.

New York is hard, cynical, ruthless, even beyond other cities. From their early repression its children emerge sophisticated, both stunted and overdeveloped, perverted, premature, forced by the artificiality of their environment.

I am a New Yorker. I like New York. And I like cities. And it's not my desire to make New York more suburban. I would personally just like to vet each person.

I will say, though, that San Francisco is a very friendly city. It's the kind of place where people smile at you and you can strike up conversations on the street, so there's always an adjustment when I come back to New York. If I smile at someone on the street in New York, then they think there's something up - like, "Why is she smiling?"

I stayed in L.A. long enough to get on my feet, and then I moved back to New York. The reason I moved here was that I don't feel warm outside of a city; it's too barren in the suburbs, and L.A. is a suburb. Here, it felt active.

This is New York, a combat zone, and everyone has to have an angle or they're not allowed over the bridges or through the tunnels. Let them have their angles, it's what they live for. You've got better things to worry about, like making sure the people that actually matter don't try any funny stuff.

In New York City, a lot of people think "the great outdoors" is the area between your front door and a taxi cab.

For in that city [New York] there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.

The utter insanity of living in a place like this doesn't occur to the 9,000,000 people who inhabit New York. Except for visits I think I shall not be here any more as a resident.

I'm a creature of the New York City streets.