Benny Goodman Quotes

I love New York. I love the multicultural vibe here. Los Angeles doesn't inspire me in any way. Everyone is in the same industry, yet you feel very isolated.

I used to feel so alone in the city. All those gazillions of people and then me, on the outside. Because how do you meet a new person? I was very stunned by this for many years. And then I realized, you just say, "Hi." They may ignore you. Or you may marry them. And that possibility is worth that one word.

Cities force us to interact with strangers and with the strange. They pry the mind open. And that is why they are the idea that has unleashed so many of our new ideas.

New York is the only city that I have ever lived in that I have felt at home.

I'm an irredeemable urbanite. I can't imagine living more than a five-minute walk from my fellow human beings. Other people are vital to my peace of mind.

Everyone in New York is fluid and thinking and inspiring each other.

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

I love the idea of the street vibe, having folks together, out in the street at midnight.

Work aside, we come to New York for the possibility of interaction and inspiration.

Urban living is an intersection of business and personal life.

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.

I'm obsessed with New York. I just find it so remarkable. You really treasure this city when you go to different countries and you see that there is no mix. When you get back to the city, it's such an exciting place.

I feel like my behavior goes over better on the streets of New York.

The City of New York is like an enormous citadel, a modern Carcassonne. Walking between the magnificent skyscrapers one feels the presence on the fringe of a howling, raging mob, a mob with empty bellies, a mob unshaven and in rags.

I feel like I can be infinitely inspired because New York is huge. There's always a new street I can go to, or a billion new people who I haven't met that I could write about. New York is very humbling.

In my case, I was stuck there for quite a while. New York is large enough to be a very abstract city, so nobody cares.

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.

In New York everyone just kind of knows each other.

As far as cities, I love London. I go to London very often because I think the young people there are very creative. I also love New York, of course, and the clash of different cultures you find there.

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.

You can live in the same city your entire life and still be completely a foreigner when you step out, in your old age, onto the street.

Self-consciousness is the curse of the city and all that sophistication implies.

In New York, you can bump into someone on the street and go to a thing, go get coffee real quick.

People in New York just seem a lot more open than I thought they would be.

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