Subway Culture Quotes

If you go into an underground train in London - probably anywhere, but chiefly in London - there's that sense of almost entering a ghostly dimension. People are very still and quiet; they don't exchange many pleasantries.

In New York you can just walk out and be among people. You're on the subway among people, you go to cafes, you can talk to people.

But most of all, I like to watch people. Sometimes I ride the subway all day and look at them and listen to them. I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where they are going. Sometimes I even go to Fun parks and ride in the jet cars when they race on the edge of town at midnight and the police don't care as long as they're insured. As long as everyone has ten thousand insurance everyone's happy. Sometimes I sneak around and listen in subways. Or I listen at soda fountains, and do you know what? People don't talk about anything.

In New York, you've got Donald Trump, Woody Allen, a crack addict and a regular Joe, and they're all on the same subway car.

There's nowhere in New York to go and have your emotions to yourself. People just look the other way because every day people see someone crying on the subway!

New York City is home to so many people from so many places and the uniqueness of it is that you never feel a foreigner. English is almost hardly ever heard in the subway. In fact, it's weird.

Years ago when a man began to notice that if he stood up on the subway he was immediately replaced by two people, he figured he was getting too fat.

I used to play in the subway. If everyone tossed in a quarter, at the end of the day it would add up. It shows you aren't invisible. And it's better than being ignored, or kicked in the head, or worse.

I think people who live in New York don't realize just how much time they spend talking about the subway.

I love New York. I was in New York at the age of 13, at the School of American Ballet, walking around the subways in my little bunhead and thinking I was so cool.

New York is a city of conversations overheard, of people at the next restaurant table (micrometers away) checking your watch, of people reading the stories in your newspaper on the subway train.

I like L.A., I really do, but I'm really a New Yorker. In New York, there's a feeling that you're not praised or treated too preciously. No one ever feels too important because someone on the subway will reassure you that you're not.

We have the alternative. "Do I want to be on the subway looking at these people, or do I want to be in my phone looking at my people?"

Deprived of the opportunity to judge one another by the cars we drive, New Yorkers, thrown together daily on mass transit, form silent opinions based on our choices of subway reading. Just by glimpsing the cover staring back at us, we can reach the pinnacle of carnal desire or the depths of hatred. Soul mate or mortal enemy.

I'm an east coaster, you know, I'm brought up in Toronto where it's very much, like, kind of a miniature New York in that there's a subway and you're surrounded by people a lot and, you know, you bump into people and you have interactions and you communicate and la la la.

I like to watch people. Sometimes I ride the subway all day and look at them and listen to them. I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where they're going.

I mean, being provincial is a privilege in a way. Also people in New York think everybody interacts because they all take the subway. "Oh, I see all these different people! All these different walks of life on the subway." Well, they're not coming to your dinner party. Certainly, in small-town Nebraska, everyone indeed did mix together.

I'm a New Yorker. Matter of fact, the more I'm in places like Texas and California, the more I know I'm a New Yorker. I have no confusions. About that.

Moving back to New York is perhaps what I'm most excited about. Alternate side of the road parking. Flip flops on the subway. And any food I want, delivered. Sometimes more than once a day.

At the height of rush hour, people on the London underground actually say "excuse me." Imagine what would happen if you tried an insane stunt like that on the New York City subway. The other passengers would take it as a sign of weakness, and there'd be a fight over who got to keep your ears as a trophy.

I've always lived in a city. I'm very social, and in a place like New York, even if you're alone on the subway, you never feel lonely.

People always ask me what I'm doing on the subway, but I love it! Sometimes I like to ride in the front car and look out the window at the rats.

There's nothing surprising about me. I'm dull. I am a fan of the New York subway. I love it.

I love getting on the subway because you get on the car, and you see the entire human race represented in any given subway car.

I hate people walking down the street listening to the soundtrack of their lives which responds to them but not their setting. I hate the overspill of sound which metro and subway riders are oblivious to because they notice no one and nothing around them.