New Yorkers Quotes

10. "People in New York love to tell you how exhausted they are. Then they fall apart when someone says, 'Yeah, you look pretty tired'".

David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day

9. "The most irritating thing of all is that New Yorkers really don't care what you say about their city. "

Russell Baker, There's a Country in My Cellar

8. "Roaming the streets of New York, we encountered many examples of this delightful quality of New Yorkers, forever on their toes, violently, restlessly involving themselves in the slightest situation brought to their attention, always posing alternatives, always ready with an answer or an argument."

Jessica Mitford, Hons and Rebels

7. "New Yorkers do not amble, do not meander, and do not hesitate. Nor do they pay much attention to the world around them. New Yorkers are that way of necessity. To preserve a modicum of sanity in a city of borderline lunacy, they learn to screen out Manhattan's nerve-racking sights and sounds."

Joseph R. Garber, Rascal Money

6. "The last time anybody made a list of the top hundred character attributes of New Yorkers, common sense snuck in at number 79. "

Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

5. "New Yorkers are prone to boast of their superiority over the denizens of other cities, but it is a fact that the American metropolis is inferior in culture, intelligence and morals to almost any city in the world. It is the home of big men with little soul, big newspapers with little editors."

Henry O. Morris, Waiting for the Signal

4. "How many New Yorkers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
None of your fucking business."

Lynne Tillman, No Lease on Life

3. "In New York people check each other out to find out who they are, whereas in other cities there's no reason to bother since no one is ever anyone. As Stan used to say, 'Half the people in New York if they were anywhere else would be either interviewed or arrested."

Edmund White, City Boy

2. "New York is a universe: true New Yorkers might suspect the existence of other places, but do not quite believe in them."

Andrei Codrescu, Hail Babylon!

1. "For generations --since long before the great cities of this country became associated in the public mind with their problems rather than their wonders-- New Yorkers have believed in the old saying that they learn at their mother's knee: 'If you can't say something nice, you're never in danger of being taken for an out-of-towner.'"

Calvin Trillin, "What's the Good Word?" The Subway Chronicles

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