Jean Shepherd Quotes

Old New York City is a friendly old town From Washington Heights to Harlem on down There's a-mighty many people all millin' all around They'll kick you when you're up and knock you when you're down It's hard times in the city Livin' down in New York town

I grew up in the Lower East Side of New York.

I try to remember what it was like to be a kid in New York. I lived in different parts of my childhood in Manhattan on the Upper West Side, where 'When You Reach Me' is set, and also in the Midwood section of Brooklyn.

In New York, you're forced to deal with life; it's there in front of you on a daily basis.

Just two days in Manhattan and you find yourself looking for a place to wash your handkerchief after you wipe your forehead and it comes away black. Is there a dirtier or more fascinating city anywhere in the land? The answer to both parts of the question has to be positively negative.

I was obsessed with New York early on. I was watching sitcoms that were set in or around New York, like 'The Dick Van Dyke Show.' I was always very fascinated with the people who were on 'What's My Line?' and I always had an incredible obsession with the city.

My favorite elements of 'Start Talkin'' were those man-on-the-street pieces. I love shooting those. I was born in Manhattan, have lived in or around New York my entire life, and I feel like I'm in my element when doing those pieces.

I go down the street thinking, 'Oh my God, I live in New York.' But then I think, 'Oh my God, I'm on Broadway!'

New York City isn't Chuck E. Cheese. We don't have ball pits for the kids to play in. We have titty bars and crack.

[On living in New York City:] I'm oblivious to everything. I just don't notice anything. I sat in a coffee shop, drank half a cup of coffee before I noticed there was lipstick on the cup. There was wadded-up gum and lipstick on the napkin. I must have been sitting on that woman's lap for an hour.

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.

New York is perhaps the only place in America where you feel at the centre and not at the margins, in the provinces, so for that reason I prefer its horror to this privileged beauty, its enslavement to the freedoms which remain local and privileged and very particularized, and which do not represent a genuine antithesis.

New York is a small place when it comes to the part of it that wakes up just as the rest is going to bed.

I love New York ... I think it's the best city in the world. As far as cities go, everything's there. I think it's so vibrant. I love the people, I think they're honest, in your face. If they don't like you, they'll say, 'Get out of my way,' if they like you they'll slap you on the back and support you. It's a very intoxicating environment to be in.

If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptown-on-the-Hudson, call New York. Cosmopolitan they call it, you bet. So's a piece of fly-paper. You listen close when they're buzzing and trying to pull their feet out of the sticky stuff. "Little old New York's good enough for us"--that's what they sing.

Give me such shows - give me the streets of Manhattan!

I live in New York City. I could never live anywhere else. The events of September 11 forced me to confront the fact that no matter what, I live here and always will. One of my favorite things about New York is that you can pick up the phone and order anything and someone will deliver it to you. Once I lived for a year in another city, and almost every waking hour of my life was spent going to stores, buying things, loading them into the car, bringing them home, unloading them, and carrying them into the house. How anyone gets anything done in these places is a mystery to me.

The only reason I wouldn't go to some parts of New York is the real risk of meeting Donald Trump.

New York City is filled with the same kind of people I left New Jersey to get away from.

new york provides not only a continuing excitation but also a spectacle that is continuing.

Someone did a study of the three most-often-heard phrases in New York City. One is "Hey taxi." Two is "What train do I take to get to Bloomingdales?" And three is "Don't worry, it's only a flesh wound.

All one has to do to gather a large crowd in New York is to stand on the curb a few minutes and gaze intently at the sky.

This isn't a fairy tale. It's New York City.

At least Manhattan, in terms of danger and eccentricity, is much more of a theme park now. You couldn't really shoot the old Law & Order in New York today. It's a different city.

New York walking isn't exercise: it's a continually showing make-your-own movie.