Walt Whitman Quotes

The most important American addition to the World Experience was the simple surprising fact of America. We have helped prepare mankind for all its later surprises.

New York is one of the greatest cities in the world. It is a fitting host to its many international visitors, who can come to witness first-hand what a vibrant multicultural democracy looks like.

A hundred times have I thought New York is a catastrophe and 50 times: It is a beautiful catastrophe.

Who'd give up sunny California for the grey old Earls Court Road? I'm looking out at blue skies and the mountains and trees, and it's so beautiful.

The people of the United States live in a new country, that is, I mean new to western civilization. They came here to get rid of Europe, many of them; some to worship God in their own way and carry on their governments in their own way. They were freed from the long warhabit of Europe.

New York in spring and autumn is absolutely beautiful, but the winter is absolutely depressing.

To me, the difference between New York and London is that things are boring and staid in London. But even the sh-tty diner and bars here are kind of exciting for me. Downtown is funky, West Village is beautiful with the cobbled streets, but I love going uptown because you then you go, "F-ck, I'm in New York!" You see all the skyscrapers.

Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber as a word was better. But it did not apply to Williamsburg Brooklyn. Prairie was lovely and Shenandoah had a beautiful sound but you couldn't fit those words into Brooklyn. Serene was the only word for it especially on a Saturday afternoon in summer.

Brooklyn Heights itself is a window on the port. Here, where the perspective is fixed by the towers of Manhattan and the hills of New Jersey and Staten Island, the channels running between seem fingers of the world ocean. Here one can easily embrace the suggestion, which Whitman felt so easily, that the whole American world opens out from here, north and west.

You can see the most beautiful things from the observation deck of the Empire State Building. I read somewhere that people on the street are supposed to look like ants, but that's not true. They look like little people. And the cars look like little cars. And even the buildings look little. It's like New York is a miniature replica of New York, which is nice, because you can see what it's really like, instead of how it feels when you're in the middle of it.

And before me was the great raw bulge and bulk of my American continent; somewhat far across, gloomy, crazy New York was throwing up its cloud of dust and brown steam. There is something brown and holy about the East; and California is white like washlines and emptyheaded - at least that's what I thought then.

National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.

The important thing for me is that I try to understand the culture. Everything I thought I knew about the country was either through TV, music, movies or hopping in and out when I did shows. You can't just get the US through being in Miami, LA and New York. Middle America is the place to understand real America.

I know that New York is big, there are huge buildings, but in fact, it's quite small and contained.

The position of the Americans is quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one.

The character of Anglo-American civilization . . . is the product . . . of two perfectly distinct elements that elsewhere have often made war with each other, but which, in America, they have succeeded in incorporating somehow into one another and combining marvelously. I mean to speak of the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom.

Jesus was the First American.

I like church. It's empty when I go. I walk around. There are so many beautiful Catholic churches in New York.

I'm always looking for ways to connect myself with American people and that American feeling. I'm trying to pick up on the feeling of places, like the Los Angeles feeling or the New York feeling... Los Angeles is much better for me that way.

I think, especially among the New York intelligentsia at that time, that there was a reason Bob Dylan went to New York to happen, because there was a culture developed there around the ideas of civil rights, around the idea of democracy growing out of Emerson and Thoreau, these ideas of the fanfare for the common man.

I think America is amazing for its landscape and its history. California is beautiful, New York is beautiful, but when you're a gypsy at heart, it probably suits you to be traveling.

America is the only place where man is full-grown!

My memories are beautiful because my wife Joan is English and shortly after we were married, we stayed in London and I never forgot it. We loved it so much that we've been back very often and it's always a thrill. To me, there's New York City where I was born and raised and then there's London!

I love just seeing shots of New York inside of a fictional movie that are not controlled. I do not like shots with extras, I have to say. I don't mind extras in other scenes, but I love New York City streets just as they look. I don't even care if someone looks at the camera. It doesn't bother me.

New York is the true City of Light in any season.