Top 151 Yorker Quotes

Activating is about changing people‘s perceptions of overlooked or invisible spaces. A building can become an archetype, invisible, like for a New Yorker, for example, the Statue of Liberty. You look at it, and it disappears into the thousands of times you‘ve already seen it.

Every New Yorker has the right to clean air, safe drinking water, and healthy communities to raise their children – and you can rest assured that I will aggressively protect that right, not just on Earth Day, but every day.

I am a grizzly New Yorker.

If you’re a New Yorker, there are two things that are most important: a car and a washer and dryer. Literally everyone else in America has those things! It’s so weird to them that these are our luxuries. You can eat at Per Se every night, but I don’t have a car or washer and dryer!

‘The New Yorker’ was really my first experience with serious editing. Previously, I’d more or less just had copyediting with a few suggestions – not much.

I get ‘The New Yorker,’ and I’m usually about three issues behind. But I do catch up. The problem is that it always seems like homework, but then you start reading it and go, ‘Why am I not doing this all the time? These are such great stories!’ But, yeah, that stack gets so big and dense.

In New York, all the crews read ‘The New Yorker.’ In Los Angeles, they don’t know from ‘The New Yorker.’

I felt uncomfortable calling myself a writer until I started with ‘The New Yorker,’ and then I was like, ‘Okay, now you can call yourself that.’

I’m used to driving fast; I’m a New Yorker.

I’m going to do whatever I have to do to help a New Yorker, whether it’s a girl on the street or a tenant in a housing development.

I wanted to be a literary writer, so I wrote story after story and sent them to ‘The New Yorker.’

I’ve always essentially been a New Yorker.

New York lost a classic. Carmine was an old school New Yorker.

To me, what defines a New Yorker is the edge that one develops from having actually lived here. Once you have it, it doesn’t go away, and everywhere else in the world feels like it is in slow motion.

I am a New Yorker.

It’s a project that touched me as an immigrant and as a New Yorker.

Like every New Yorker, I have a love/hate relationship with the city. There are times it’s overbearing, but when I’m away even for a little while, I can’t wait to get home. I am a New Yorker.

A real New Yorker likes the sound of a garbage truck in the morning.

I feel like I’m a New Yorker to the bone. But there is a lot of the South in me. I know there is a lot of the South in my mannerisms. There’s a lot of the South in my expectations of other people and how people treat each other. There’s a lot of the South in the way I speak, but it could never be home.

To me, a New Yorker is someone that has general disdain toward landlords, mass-transit authorities, electric companies, sports-team managers, NYU and its students, and anything new.

A part of me is a liberal New Yorker involved in politics and certain attitudes about movies. I kind of lost my indie credibility over ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith.’ I know I haven‘t lost it. I just have to go make an independent movie. I just have to do it. Just for me.

I see a New York where there is no barrier to the God-given potential of every New Yorker. I see a New York where everyone who wants a good job can find one. I see a New York where the people can believe in a grounded government again.

I am a New Yorker, and 7:00 A.M. is a civilized hour to finish the day, not to start it.

I’m a New Yorker, and I rarely get to work at home.

I stay up on current events. I read ‘The New Yorker’ and ‘The Economist.’ I go to community meetings to see what concerns the people in my neighborhood. I studied literature in college, so I also continue to read poetry, literature, and novels.

The more traumatic events you endure with the city, the more of a New Yorker you become.

Probably the biggest influence on my career was the late John Hersey, who, while he was at ‘The New Yorker,’ wrote one of the masterpieces of narrative non-fiction, ‘Hiroshima.’ Hersey was a teacher of mine at Yale, and a friend. He got me to see the possibility of journalism not just as a business but as an art form.

I’m a New Yorker. My background is in theater, so staying here, I have the opportunity to get back to that, which I would love to do.

If you’re on a contract at ‘The New Yorker,’ the contract specifies the number of words you will publish in the magazine per year. I get paid by the word, like most writers. That’s one reason why the Scientology article was 25,000 words long!

I’m constantly saying, ‘I read a fascinating article in ‘The New Yorker’… ‘ I say it so often that sometimes I think I have nothing interesting to say myself, I merely regurgitate ‘The New Yorker.’

Let’s say honorary favorite New Yorker is John Lennon, and favorite real New Yorker is Biggie, because he’s the best.

I live a very quiet life, although I’m very urban and a diehard New Yorker.

I feel like my 50 years at Harvard were an interlude. I’m really a New Yorker.

Having recorded his first album, ‘Tapestry,’ in 1969, in Berkeley, California, during the student riots, McLean, a native New Yorker, became a kind of weather vane for what he called the ‘generation lost in space.’

I’m not a reporter but the ‘New Yorker’ treats everyone like a reporter.

I’ve actually enjoyed my time in L.A. more than a New Yorker is supposed to.

I used to never miss the ‘New Yorker’ or ‘New York.’ Now I never bother.

So, you know, I always say that I’m a Mexican, but if I had to be a citizen of anywhere else, I’d be a citizen of Manhattan. I feel very much a New Yorker.

I’m a New Yorker. I never thought I’d say that.

I listen to my early Gang Starr interviews, I’m like, damn I was really trying to sound like a New Yorker then.

I was such a New Yorker, I hardly knew what the Oscars were.

It’s amazing: I am a New Yorker. It’s strange; I never thought I would be.

I was 30 when 9/11 happened and I had lived exactly 15 years of life in America, so I was half American. I was a full-fledged New Yorker.

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.

I’ve little in common with the scene in Silicon Valley and San Francisco. I’m a New Yorker.

Andy was not a hippie or rebel but more like a mischievous child. He was never out to destroy everything. He became a New Yorker, and New Yorkers know, like the media, what’s going on around them is a fashion thing that will change to something else.

I lived in New York City for a while and miss it like it’s a person. Although I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, I’m a New Yorker at heart. A stroll through Central Park, a visit to the MET, a show on Broadway. There is no other city like it in the world!

Reading ‘The New Yorker’ – I start on the last page and go backwards, reading all the cartoons. Then I read ‘Shouts and Murmurs.’ Then I read the reviews. Then I read the articles that immediately appeal to me.

In 1927, if you were stuck with idle time, reading is what you did. It’s no accident that the ‘Book-of-the-Month Club‘ and ‘The Literary Guild‘ were founded in that period as well as a lot of magazines, like ‘Reader‘s Digest,’ ‘Time,’ and ‘The New Yorker.’

The problem of online identity is expressed best in an old ‘New Yorker’ cartoon with a picture of a dog next to a computer, and the dog says, ‘No one online knows you’re a dog.’

The most offensive thing that ever occurred in ‘The New Yorker’ would be, like, the mildest thing at a Chris Rock concert.

Back in 1992, I had my first story accepted by ‘The New Yorker.’

As a New Yorker, or wherever I am, I just want to know I can get our of the house in five minutes if I have to and not have to spend a bunch of time obsessing in the mirror, trying on a million different options. Now, I just know what works.

‘The New Yorker’s’ drama critics have always had a comparable authority because, for the most part, the magazine made it a practice to employ critics who moonlighted in the arts. They worked both sides of the street, so to speak.

In practice, I don’t only bowl yorker.

It’s like a series of waves hitting you. First, getting excerpted in the ‘New Yorker’ last summer, then getting published, then the best-seller list, the award, the movie deal, now this, a Pulitzer.

In Washington, no one believes anything unless it comes from ‘The New Yorker,’ ‘New York Times‘ editorial page, or ‘The Washington Post.’

I knew I didn’t want to come out in the ‘New Yorker’; it just felt wrong. It needed an African conversation.

I fell in love with New York. It was like every human being, like any relationship. When I was a young New Yorker, it was one city. When I was a grown man, it was another city. I worked with many dance organizations and many wonderful people.

It was memorable the first time ‘The New Yorker’ bought a cartoon from me. I had been sending them batches for years every week, and they didn’t respond to them.

When you’re from New York, people take a second look at you. In Virginia, the other players always asked about the fast life we live. They want to know about the crime. As a player, they expect you to be able to do things that excite a crowd. And they always want to beat you. You’re the New Yorker.

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.

If you write chick lit, and if you’re a New Yorker, and if your book becomes the topic of pop-culture fascination, the paper might make dismissive and ignorant mention of your book. If you write romance, forget about it. You’ll be lucky if they spell your name right on the bestseller list.

Five years before ‘Kitchen Confidential‘ – and before then, the ‘New Yorker’ essay that led to the book – Bourdain published ‘A Bone in the Throat,’ a crime novel set in the restaurant world he lived and breathed.

I lived in New York for 10 years, and every New Yorker sees a shrink.

I feel like I just have such the blood and bones of a New Yorker that I can almost imagine better, like, giving up the fight and not being able to afford the city and going out West, keeping a small place here, and then when I’m like 80, coming back here, living on the park and going to the theater.

I think that anyone who likes writing views ‘The New Yorker’ as the, you know, pinnacle of the publishing world. If you get 50 words published in ‘The New Yorker,’ it’s more important than 50 articles in other places. So, would I love to one day write for them? I guess. But that’s not my sole ambition.

I always knew I was a writer. And I always thought to myself, ‘Well, why not me?’ Someone has to be on the best-seller list, ‘Why not me?’ Someone has to write for the ‘New Yorker,’ ‘Why not me?’ And I didn’t really get much positive reinforcement as a kid, so I thought, ‘Well let me show you what I can do.’

At one point, I had a story accepted at the ‘New Yorker,’ which sent off weird bells in people when I told them – ‘Oh,’ they thought, ‘now you are a writer’ – where I really had been for the last 30-odd years.

If I’m performing in the United States, I’m able to speak Spanglish, and the crowd comprehends. If I’m in the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico, then I’m completely Spanish. I feel like a New Yorker that represents all Latinos.

Because I’m such a die-hard New Yorker, I was skeptical of Montreal being a New York double.

Being female was just one more way I felt different and weird. I was also a young ‘un, and also my cartoons were not like typical ‘New Yorker’ cartoons.

I never studied art, but taught myself to draw by imitating the New Yorker cartoonists of that day, instead of doing my homework.

We all grew up in Bronxville, I went to Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart – in the old location on Convent Avenue – and I’ve lived here since 1962. I couldn’t feel more like a New Yorker.

I’m a New Yorker, originally. I was raised in Jackson Heights. I went to P.S. 148 and then Newtown High School. If World War II didn’t come, I’d still be there in school. World War II saved me.

I was inspired by the great West Indian fast bowler Joel Garner‘s action. I gained confidence knowing I was emulating his action and eventually perfected the Yorker.

If I was not born in this lifetime in New York, certainly in a previous life, I was a New Yorker.

Carnegie was a life-long dream because I was a born New Yorker. I was born in upstate New York, and we’ve played Radio City, and we’ve played The Beacon, but Carnegie was this mystical place, you know?

When I took over ‘The New Yorker,’ there was a very, very good, smart staff in place.

Toronto is a special city, and the environment is perfect for the arts; free and alive. I’m a New Yorker, and Toronto reminds me of a much cleaner New York, so it’s like coming home after your mom just cleaned your room for you; for me that’s a lovely environment.

When you live in New York, one of two things happen – you either become a New Yorker, or you feel more like the place you came from.

‘The New Yorker’s fiction podcast I like a lot, where they have authors pick short stories by other authors that appeared in ‘The New Yorker.’

Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim.

I am a New Yorker! Mass transit is my sweet ride. I know the subway system like the back of my hand.

I was kind of an unhappy kid. I always felt like a cynical New Yorker trapped in a little kid‘s body. I started to get some pretty bad anxiety disorders around puberty, which totally did not work with growing up a mile away from the beach. I started cutting my own hair.

My parents put the New Yorker in my crib. I saw Vogue and Vanity Fair around the house before I could read.

For news, I follow ‘The New York Times,’ ‘The New Yorker,’ and ‘ProPublica.’ For entertainment, I like The A.V. Club and The Onion.

Having spent many summers in Southampton as a New Yorker, and as someone whose family has a place in Newport, I have a strong affinity for each place.

The ‘New Yorker’ asked me to shoot a story on climate change in 2005, and I wound up going to Iceland to shoot a glacier. The real story wasn’t the beautiful white top. It ended up being at the terminus of the glacier where it’s dying.

I’m Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. I’m Italian on Columbus Day. I’m a New Yorker every day.

Veteran print editors and reporters at places like the ‘Times’ and ‘The New Yorker’ manage to feed and clothe their families without costing their companies a million bucks a month, and they produce a great deal more valuable reporting and analysis than the network news stars do.

I love the honesty of New Yorkers. When a New Yorker says ‘let’s do lunch,’ they actually mean it. In L.A., when they say ‘let’s do lunch,’ they’re just trying to say good-bye.

I like to stay balanced in life, so I don’t have to do some radical diet. I love my job, and I obviously want to feel good when I am working, but I also want to feel energized and agile all the time. As a New Yorker, I live in the land of plenty, and yet every day I see people who could use a good meal.

I’m a New Yorker, you know.

Every hard working New Yorker, regardless of their income, race, or gender deserves an equal shot at attaining retirement security.

‘All In’ is like the Giants motto, so I kind of took that, and I kind of used New York as the backdrop – how diehard New Yorkers are for their team. Me being a New Yorker, I just had to show my love for the city as well as my love for the New York Giants.

Like ‘Sex and the City’ – if you’re a New Yorker, you knew half the places they were going to. I want ‘The Chi’ to feel that way as well.

Woody Allen‘s movies are so much a part of me. I grew up watching them over and over and would read all his comic pieces for the New Yorker. In some ways, his influence is so much there that I can’t even locate it any more.

I said, to be a New Yorker you have to live here for six months, and if at the end of the six months you find you walk faster, talk faster, think faster, you’re a New Yorker.

I’m a native New Yorker. Everything to do with New York feels like my family.

When you get into statistical analysis, you don’t really expect to achieve fame. Or to become an Internet meme. Or be parodied by ‘The Onion’ – or be the subject of a cartoon in ‘The New Yorker.’ I guess I’m kind of an outlier there.

Most magazines have peak moments. They live on, they do just okay, or they die. ‘The New Yorker’ has had a very different kind of existence.

My family is very New Yorker.

A New Yorker is anyone who has the guts to really live in the city.

As an old-time New Yorker, it’s not that I miss the ’70s and ’80s or whatever. I miss the fact that there was a certain kind of energy that exists when people can live for nothing.

New York’s my home. Born and raised. I’m a New Yorker to the bone.

While I’m a New Yorker at heart, and ‘Harlem Honey‘ runs through my veins, Atlanta – its awesome residents and glorious landscapes – has a special place in the hearts of my family and I.

I’m a New Yorker, and I jaywalk with the best of them.

In the high level cartoon world, my number one admired hero would be Chas Addams – really a top, top artist that the ‘New Yorker’ was lucky to find and employ.

I read the ‘New Yorker’ when I was a kid. I used to love the cartoons and pick the cartoons out of the library, so I felt I knew the world of their cartoons.

What the New Yorker calls home would seem like a couple of closets to most Americans, yet he manages not only to live there but also to grow trees and cockroaches right on the premises.

When I was out in Portland there was a lot of really great things about it. But being home, I’m a New Yorker, and I think I’ve really enjoyed being back out here.

I always have issues with trust. I’m a New Yorker… Really, I think trust is something that comes from the gut. And I think you have to – it’s probably the worst advice to give people – but I think you gotta trust people from your gut.

You have to be a xenophile at heart to be a true New Yorker.

I came out of a building and this woman stopped me, like, ‘You’re Miss Universe!’ And she was a New Yorker! I’m not used to New Yorkers being fans, because they’re so blase about it, you know.

To every New Yorker – and to all those who believed in what I tried to stand for – I sincerely apologize.

I grew up in Chelsea on 22nd Street… I am really a native New Yorker.

It’s pretty crazy. I was thinking about that today, how ‘True Blood‘ has penetrated so much of the cultural zeitgeist. It’s truly amazing; it’s incredible! The cover of ‘Rolling Stone‘ is major. What’s next, the cover of ‘Vanity Fair?’ When I’m in a ‘New Yorker’ cartoon, then I will feel like I have made it.

I had a brief period of questioning whether I should perhaps adopt a child. And my New Yorker editor, Henry Finder, was horrified by the notion.

I’m a New Yorker, man. I’m a Knicks fan.

One identity is as a television writer, which is very classically Southern California, but another of my personae is as a New Yorker cartoonist.

Unless you’re born here, I don’t know if you can ever become a full New Yorker.

I’m a New Yorker, and I’m a fighter.

I’m a fourth-generation New Yorker. My family has been in New York for many, many years.

I’m a New Yorker, and working in New York was divine for me. I loved working there and going to work there, which I’ve been able to do three or four times in my career, and I just love it. It’s my favorite.

I think the mix of narrative and analysis that the ‘New Yorker’ requires is a perfect expression of what my parents each gave me.

When I was working on the al-Zawahiri piece, a large part of it published in ‘The New Yorker’ in 2002, I had spoken to a lot of Zawahiri’s friends, people who had been in prison with him, people that had been in al-Jihad with him. And quite to my surprise, they liked that article a lot.

I travel so much when I work, I’ve really been happy to do ‘Nice Work’ because I feel like a true New Yorker again. I have my little regimen during the day, and I can take advantage of the museums and the things that I love. And people watching!

I’m a New Yorker; I’ve paid my dues.

My favorite way to cook a clam is in chowder. I was a New Yorker for 20 years, and I always loved tomato-based, celery-heavy Manhattan chowders.

Technically, I’m a New Yorker.

If you’re born and raised a New Yorker, you’re probably pretty to-the-point, and you don’t care so much about hurting people’s feelings as you do about saying what’s on your mind, because you assume they’ll get over it.

Being a New Yorker, I used to dance to Latin music. There was a place called the Palladium on Broadway. And Tito Puente and Tito Rodriguez used to play. So I still have that in my blood.

I have no credentials. I have no money. I literally come from a poor place. I was a servant. I dropped out of college. The next thing you know I’m writing for the ‘New Yorker,’ I have this sort of life, and it must seem annoying to people.

I’m a New Yorker; my oven is used for storage.

Why on earth is the ‘New Yorker’ publishing puff pieces about pretty girls who go to parties? Does the ‘New Yorker’ ever run photos of cute boys just because they’re cute and they come from money and they go to lots of parties?

No one knows restaurants like a New Yorker – they’re incredibly discerning and restaurant savvy.

I think one of the best jobs in the universe must be being the editor of ‘The New Yorker’, but there are a number of magazines that I’d be excited to be the editor of. They would be ‘Wired‘, ‘The New Yorker’ and probably, ‘Vogue’.

Publication in ‘The New Yorker’ meant everything, and it’s no exaggeration to say that it changed my life.

One of the nice things about the United States is that, wherever you go, people speak the same language. So native New Yorkers can move to San Francisco, Houston, or Milwaukee and still understand and be understood by everyone they meet. Right? Well, not exactly. Or, as a native New Yorker might put it, ‘Wrong!’

I’m a New Yorker, and I live in the country.

I kind of grew up on the East Coast, lived in New York for a while, then moved to L.A. So I’m not a New Yorker at all, but I’m much happier in New York; I’ve always liked it better.

I am more of a New Yorker than ever and just actually, sometimes I fantasize about living somewhere else, where it’s maybe not quite so crowded or stressful, blah, blah, blah and after September 11th, I guess I could just not imagine living anywhere else.

When I first moved here, I almost felt like I was obligated to hate L.A. as a New Yorker. I moved way too fast for this city. I walked everywhere, and I was lonely, too. It was a really hard time not knowing anybody, and you don’t run into people the way you do in New York. You can go a week without seeing anyone.

You’ll see every kind of New Yorker in there. You really feel like you’re in the belly of the beast when you’re in Union Square.

I have a very focused agenda. And I hold myself to the highest standards. I judge myself more harshly than any voter, or any New Yorker, will.

Al Roker is one of the most sensible people you’ll ever meet. He’s raised two daughters and a son. And I love him, in that as jovial as he is, he’s a straight shooter. He’s a New Yorker, as they say.

I don’t mind other guys seeing movies I want to see and then writing about them. That’s fine, especially when it’s the New Yorker’s Anthony Lane, because he knows this stuff pretty well.

I guess if you’re independent, not afraid of much, and extremely stylish, that makes you a pretty good candidate for being a New Yorker.

Yes, I’m a New Yorker, born and bred. While I’m not quite the L.A. snob that Woody Allen is, I do find myself happier in New York.

How could a New Yorker possibly take something called the Hollywood String Quartet seriously?