New York quotes
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"It's true that you might be socially isolated because you're reading in the library, at home and so on, but you're intensely alive. In fact you're much more alive than these folk walking the streets of New York in crowds, with no intellectual interrogation and questioning going at all."
"It was Miles Davis who took me to New York, and Coltrane was in the band, as well as Paul Chambers, Philly Jo Jones. 'Trane took me aside, and, of course, we did Blue Trane, which was my first album-and that started everything. He had confidence that I didn't have; he saw something that I didn't see."
"New York is like that perfect lover that just won't commit but he's so good that you hang around anyway, NYC is dreamy!"
"I go and I keep friends with [Abe] Rosenthal at the New York Times and people of that sort, you know. And all - I mean, not all the Jews, but a lot of the Jews are great friends of mine, they swarm around me and are friendly to me because they know that I'm friendly with Israel. But they don't know how I really feel about what they are doing to this country. And I have no power, no way to handle them, but I would stand up if under proper circumstances."
"New York was a city where you could be frozen to death in the midst of a busy street and nobody would notice."
"Paris-New York, the two high tension magnetic poles between life, life of the senses, of the spirit in Paris, and life in action in New York."
"Just like New Yorkers themselves, the trees in New York [city] work harder than any others in the world."
"Living in New York City gives people real incentives to want things that nobody else wants."
"Well, I was born and raised in Rochester, New York."
"Women smirk at baldness. How adorable would they find it if they began to lose their breasts in their late twenties? If both tits just shrunk up - unevenly I might add - and eventually turned into wine-cork nubs. Then it would be a different story. Then men would get the pity that they deserve. As far as I'm concerned, baldness is the male breast cancer only worse, because almost everyone gets it. True, it's not life threatening. Just social-life threatening. But in New York City, there is no difference."
"Silence? What can New York-noisy, roaring, rumbling, tumbling, bustling, story, turbulent New York-have to do with silence? Amid the universal clatter, the incessant din of business, the all swallowing vortex of the great money whirlpool-who has any, even distant, idea of the profound repose......of silence?"
"Ads answered out of desperation in the New York Review of Books proved equally futile as…the 'Bay Area Bisexual' told me I didn't quite coincide with either of her desires."
"Visually I've always liked the 20s 30s for film. I do these because I like the music. I like the clothes. I like the way the women and the guys look. There are soldiers and sailors and gangsters with the machine guns in their violin cases. It's a very colorful era of New York, full of great theater and great nightclubs and great jazz."
"New York is my home and I have a particular fondness for it. I think it's a place where you can generate any kind of story wonderfully. But I also would be very happy to make a film in Paris or Rome."
"I can live in Paris for four months or London or, you know, Barcelona. These are places that are like New York. But I don't think I could live in many places. When I had to make a film in the United States I picked San Francisco because to me it's one of the great cities of America."
"I started making choices based on what I wanted, and didn’t feel like I needed to justify them. If I wanted to cut my hair, I did it. If I wanted to move to New York, I did it. If I wanted to take a spontaneous road trip, I did it. At 24 I decided that my life is enough for me, and I stopped looking for some other piece to complete it."
"To me, the difference between New York and London is that things are boring and staid in London."
"I didn't want to be driving to work everyday and sending out my Starbucks order. I didn't want to be in New York or L.A. I wanted to have space and I wanted to be in a remote place where all of us could just be ourselves and not worry about anyone trying to listen in or get in on that. I wanted to just be comfortable. I feel like being in a big city - as much as I find New York, in particular, very inspiring in a lot of ways - can also be claustrophobic."
"New York forces you to be in endless surreal situations."
"I was the only guy who is referred to as Mr. Smith in the New York Times and in the same week as Sexy Rexy in some teen magazine."
