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Are you looking for the best quotes about New York City? Then this is for you!
There’s no place quite like New York City. With its towering skyscrapers and bright lights, the Big Apple is a place that never fails to amaze visitors.
Whether you’re looking for a great foodie destination or a city that never sleeps, New York has something for everyone.
From the statue of liberty to the Empire State Building and Central Park, there are so many landmarks to discover in New York City.
In this article, you will find an incredible selection of NYC quotes and captions for Instagram.
Table of Contents
Short New York Quotes & Captions
Let’s start this article with some short New York quotes.
You can find below a selection of famous sentences that will be the perfect New York captions for Instagram.
They are inspiring, real and loving. More importantly, they will give you a real sense of the city.
“One can’t paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
“The glamour of it all! New York! America!” – Charlie Chaplin
“When I’m in New York, I just want to walk down the street and feel this thing, like I’m in a movie.” – Ryan Adams
“I do the ‘New York Times’ crossword puzzle every morning to keep the old grey matter ticking.” – Carol Burnett
“You haven’t lived until you’ve died in New York.” – Alexander Woollcott
“If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.” – Frank Sinatra
“It always feels good to come back here. I love New York… it’s just nice to see a lot of familiar faces.” – Latrell Sprewell
“When it’s three o’clock in New York, it’s still 1938 in London.” – Bette Midler
“You get a timeless cool card in New York.” – Vin Diesel
“There’s such an energy bounding around New York, I can’t help but get swept along in it.” – Hayley Mills
“New York, the nation’s thyroid gland.” -Christopher Morley
“If I can’t be fishing or hunting, I want to be in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.” – Jim Harrison
“I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York’s skyline.” – Ayn Rand
“And the most unusual and surrealistic place in New York City is Central Park.” – Christo
“It’s pretty cliched, but Times Square is just incredible. You really feel like you’re in the capital of the world.” — Timothy F. Cahill
“Traffic signals in New York are just rough guidelines.” – David Letterman
“It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story.” – Agatha Christie
“One belongs to New York instantly. One belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.” – Thomas Wolfe
“People go to LA to find themselves”, they come to New York to become someone new.” — Lindsey Kelk
“Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.” – Groucho Marx
“New York City is a great monument to the power of money and greed… a race for rent.” – Frank Lloyd Wright
“A hundred times have I thought New York is a catastrophe and 50 times: It is a beautiful catastrophe.” – Le Corbusier
“I realized the other day that I’ve lived in New York longer than I’ve lived anywhere else. It’s amazing: I am a New Yorker. It’s strange; I never thought I would be.” – David Bowie
“When you leave New York, you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough.” – Fran Lebowitz
“New York City belongs to the people that was here and made New York City what it is.” – Eric Adams
“I’m a runner. Not a race runner, but I just love to run, and I don’t think I’ve ever tasted such amazing food like I’ve tasted in the whole entire New York.” – Adan Canto
“New York is my Lourdes, where I go for spiritual refreshment… a place where you’re least likely to be bitten by a wild goat.” – Brendan Behan
“I live in New York City, the stories of my films take place in New York; I’m a New York filmmaker.” – Spike Lee
“I always intended to move back to New York when I was first there.” – Martin Henderson
“I think I was made to live in New York. I love it.” – AnnaSophia Robb
“I get out of the taxi and it’s probably the only city which in reality looks better than on the postcards: New York.” – Milos Forman
“I attribute much of my success in New York to my ability to understand and avoid unnecessary distractions.” – Derek Jeter
“Give me such shows – give me the streets of Manhattan.” – Walt Whitman
“If you’re not in New York, you’re camping out.” – Thomas Dewey
“There is something in the New York air that makes sleep useless.” – Simone Beauvoir
“New York City is the center of the world. There is an energy here. People from all over the world feel at home here.” – Salt Bae
“I love short trips to New York; to me it is the finest three-day town on earth.” – James Cameron
“In New York I pretty much live in diners – I order French Fries, Diet Coke floats and lots of coffee.” – Lana Del Rey
“What I like about New York City is nobody cares. If they do, they don’t ever approach. They just give you a ‘What’s up?’ and that’s it.” – Chaske Spencer
Funny New York Quotes
If you are looking for some funny quotes about New York, then this is for you!
You can find below various NYC quotes that will make you smile or laugh.
“A New York divorce is in itself a diploma of virtue.” – Edith Wharton
“Being a single girl in New York… it’s what you should be doing in your twenties!” – Emilia Clarke
“I love rhymes; I love to write a poem about New York and rhyme ‘oysters’ with ‘The Cloisters.’ And ‘The lady from Knoxville who bought her brassieres by the boxful.’ I just feel a sort of small triumph.” – Garrison Keillor
“I love New York. You can pop out of the Underworld in Central Park, hail a taxi, head down Fifth Avenue with a giant hellhound loping behind you, and nobody even looks at you funny.” —-Rick Riordan
“I live in New Hampshire. We’re in favor of global warming. Eleven hundred more feet of sea-level rises? I’ve got beachfront property. You tell us up there, ‘By the end of the century, New York City could be underwater,’ and we say, ‘Your point is?'” – P. J. O’Rourke
“I take the subway all the time here in New York. I love people watching and trying to figure out everybody’s background, especially teenagers – they’re so uninhibited when they display puppy love. I concoct stories in my mind: ‘Are you guys like Romeo and Juliet?'” – Sherri Shepherd
“New York is the only city in the world where you can get run down on the sidewalk by a pedestrian.” – Russell Baker
“Anytime four New Yorkers get into a cab together without arguing, a bank robbery has just taken place.” – Johnny Carson
“You know, Greenwich Village was the traditional bohemia of New York. I wish I could say that was entirely true now. It’s, uh… changed. It’s now got, God help us, investment bankers and journalists, but it’s still a very beautiful part of New York.” – Jay McInerney
Long New York Quotes & Captions
If you want to understand more about the soul of the Big Apple, then these long NYC quotes will be perfect for you.
“New York City is crazy and beautiful and really close to my heart, and I’ve always had dear friends here – family, actually, I would say.” – Benedict Cumberbatch
“The wanderer in Manhattan must go forth with a certain innocence, because New York is best seen with innocent eyes.” – Pete Hamill
“I look out the window and I see the lights and the skyline and the people on the street rushing around looking for action, love, and the world’s greatest chocolate chip cookie, and my heart does a little dance.” – Nora Ephron
“London is satisfied, Paris is resigned, but New York is always hopeful. Always it believes that something good is about to come off, and it must hurry to meet it.” — Dorothy Parker
“The first time I landed in New York and got a cab to my hotel, I was completely struck by it: a feeling of life and chaos, 24 hours around the clock, just like in London. And whatever your problem is, it’s insignificant. You’re just a small part of something very big.” – America Ferrera
“Manhattan is like Beverly Hills. And the soul of New York has moved to Brooklyn, where everything new and exciting seems to be.” – Alec Baldwin
“We danced on the lip of the volcano, so to speak. We were young, too. And New York was still a big, open city where anything could happen and anyone could be star. Rents were cheap, creativity was encouraged, and bottle service was still 20 years away. That was the era the Club Kids came into.” – James St. James
“New York means so much to people. If you’re inclined to leave the nest, New York is where most people think they have to go, and it’s been that way since the first skyscraper.” – Griffin Dunne
“There is hardly a place in New York that you can’t walk a block and a half and get a cup of coffee. Believe me, I’ve been all over the world. There’s no place like that but New York City.” – Patti Smith
“In New York you go to the coffee shop, have a bagel, walk down the street, get hassled, run into someone else. People just waltz into your world and it’s believable.” – Brad Hall
“I worked hard all my life as far as this music business. I dreamed of the day when I could go to New York and feel comfortable and they could come out here and be comfortable.” – Tupac Shakur
“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.” – Mira Nair
“And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there… Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.” – Ezra Pound
“I go to Paris, I go to London, I go to Rome, and I always say, ‘There’s no place like New York. It’s the most exciting city in the world now. That’s the way it is. That’s it.'” – Robert De Niro
“New York was no mere city. It was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself.” – Joan Didion
“I was in New York on September 11 when those planes hit the World Trade Center. At the time, it seemed like it was a local thing. But three or four days later, by the time we drove across the country in the bus, we realized it wasn’t a local thing. You could really feel the states become united. We became the United States of America.” – John Madden
“The most wonderful street in the universe is Broadway. It is a world within itself. High and low, rich and poor, pass along at a rate peculiar to New York, and positively bewildering to a stranger.” – Frank Rich
“I needed real help in New York and I had no friends. I looked up at those buildings, I couldn’t see the sky or nothing, and I said, ‘Well, there ain’t no mountain high enough,’ and I just started – the words just fell out of my mouth, really.” – Nickolas Ashford
“When I show up in New York, and I look at the skyline, it’s like showing up in a mountain range. My gaze goes toward the most impressive-looking climb. It’s always gone to the top of the World Trade Center.” – Jimmy Chin
“A great day in New York would be to wake up, get a cup of coffee and head up to Central Park for a nice walk. Then I’d go down to the East Village and stroll around. After that, maybe I’d go check out a museum or catch an indie film at the Angelika.” – Emmanuelle Chriqui
“One thing about New York City. You are here or you are nowhere. You cannot achieve another level of anxiety, hostility or paranoia anywhere else.” – Timothee Chalamet
“Hip-hop originated from the Bronx specifically; that means everything. I’m down the block from where hip-hop was born and raised, so I’m glad I am here and I’m able to represent New York the way I am.” – A Boogie wit da Hoodie
Quotes about New Yorkers
New Yorkers are famous for many things including their hustle, their accent, their style and most importantly, their attitude.
If you’re looking for a dose of inspiration, check out these quotes about New Yorkers that will make you want to pack your bags and head to the Big Apple.
“Unless you’re born here, I don’t know if you can ever become a full New Yorker.” – Trevor Moore
“A real New Yorker likes the sound of a garbage truck in the morning.” – R. L. Stine
“My favorite thing about New York is the people, because I think they’re misunderstood. I don’t think people realize how kind New York people are.” – Bill Murray
“I’m a New Yorker, man. I’m a Knicks fan.” – Jesse Itzler
“I’m from New York. I have a non, neutral accent. It can go any way you want.” – Abigail Breslin
“Let’s say honorary favorite New Yorker is John Lennon, and favorite real New Yorker is Biggie, because he’s the best.” – Paul Dano
“I don’t like Los Angeles. The people are awful and terribly shallow, and everybody wants to be famous but nobody wants to play the game. I’m from New York. I will kill to get what I need.” – Lady Gaga
“No one knows restaurants like a New Yorker – they’re incredibly discerning and restaurant savvy.” – Daniel Boulud
“As a New Yorker you can’t help but be proud of the fact that so much music and culture started here. Punk rock, jazz, hip-hop and house music started here, George Gershwin debuted ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ here; the Velvet Underground are from New York.” – Moby
“New York’s my home. Born and raised. I’m a New Yorker to the bone.” – Vanessa Ferlito
“I’m used to driving fast; I’m a New Yorker.” – DMX
“The ‘New York Honk,’ as it was called, was the most fashionable accent an American male could have at that time, namely, the spring of 1963. One achieved it by forcing all words out through the nostrils rather than the mouth. It was at once virile… and utterly affected. Nelson Rockefeller had a New York Honk.” – Tom Wolfe
“I don’t feel American. I do feel like a New Yorker. I think there’s a real distinction there. A city allows you to become a citizen even when you’re not a national.” – Salman Rushdie
“I am a New Yorker, and 7:00 A.M. is a civilized hour to finish the day, not to start it.” – Sonia Sotomayor
“I’m a New Yorker, so I speak really fast, naturally.” – Katie Lowes
“I don’t see myself as either Irish or American, I’m a New Yorker.” – Frank McCourt
“I’m a New Yorker; my oven is used for storage.” – Cheyenne Jackson
“I’m a New Yorker. I was there during 9/11 and I saw how, not only New York City stopped for a moment, we all took an inhale and exhale at the same time – the world united at that time, and it changed my life.” – Aisha Hinds
Quotes about New York City from TV shows & movies
There are so many TV shows and movies that were filmed (or set) in NYC so it will come as no surprise that we included a lot of movie quotes about New York in this article.
From How I Met Your Mother to Gossip Girl and Sex and the City, everything is here!
“You’re not a real New Yorker until you’ve killed a cockroach with your bare hand.” – Marshall, How I Met Your Mother
“So maybe it won’t look like you thought it would in high school, but it’s important to remember that love is possible. Anything is possible. This is New York.” – Carrie Bradshaw, Sex And The City
“This is New York, we don’t talk to the neighbors. We say hello as we pass them in the hall, we call the police when we haven’t seen them for a while and there’s a weird smell coming from their apartment, and that’s it.” – Lily, How I Met Your Mother
“The only people who can afford to be artists in New York are rich.” – Sophie, Frances Ha
“I’d say you’re not a real New Yorker until you’ve stolen a cab from someone that needs it more than you do.” – Ted, How I Met Your Mother
“You may come from Ohio, but you’re in New York now, and here we don’t keep our feelings bottled up. We shove them in someone else’s face.” – Lily, How I Met Your Mother
“Don’t you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address. On the other hand, this not knowing has its charms.” – Joe Fox, You’ve Got Mail
“I’m sorry but you’re not a real New Yorker until you’ve seen Woody Allen.” – Marshall, How I Met Your Mother
“Here we are Marv. New York City, the land of opportunity.” – Harry, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York
“New York is famous for its theater, but there are different levels. There’s Broadway; off-Broadway; off-off-Broadway; homeless people screaming in the park; and below that, the play your Aunt Lily was in.” – Ted, How I Met Your Mother
“You’re a New Yorker, that won’t ever change. You got New York in your bones. Spend the rest of your life out west but you’re still a New Yorker.” – James Brogan, 25th Hour
“You’re not a real New Yorker until you’ve cried on the subway and not given a damn what anyone thinks.” – Lily, How I Met Your Mother
“And I always heard people in New York never get to know their neighbors.” – Paul Varjak, Breakfast at Tiffany’s
“New Jersey is not “pretty much New York”.” – Lily, How I Met Your Mother
“Well, like you said there’s no friends on Wall Street. Right?” – Naomi Lapaglia, The Wolf of Wall Street
“Gossip Girl here, your one and only source into the scandalous lives of Manhattan’s elite.” – Gossip Girl
New York Quotes from Songs Lyrics
Here are some of my favourite New york City quotes from songs.
“Welcome to New York – it’s been waiting for you.” – Taylor Swift
“Times Square can’t shine as bright as you.” — Plain White T’s
“I want to wake up in a city, That never sleeps” – Frank Sinatra
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