Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I had ancestors who were slave-holders, which is a difficult piece of family history to say the least. In a recent New York Times article on the subject of modern attitudes toward our slave-holding past, the writer noted that we all want to be from "innocent origins." I _know_ I'm not. Then again, I suspect most of us are not.
I wanted the attention I missed at home, so I became the leader of a gang. That way, I got attention and was recognized as being important. It wasn't a bad gang - you know, in poor districts in New York, there's a gang to every block. We never robbed at the point of a gun; we'd steal potatoes from a grocery store, or crackers.
I was raised in New York City and raised in the New York City theater world. My father was a theater director and an acting teacher, and it was not uncommon for me to have long discussions about the method and what the various different processes were to finding a character and exploring character and realizing that character.
Now, I have the opportunity to catch more balls and I relish the opportunity, ... Its something Ive always wanted. I think I needed a change. It was like Groundhog Day, doing the same thing over and over again. What better place could I be than to come to New York and try to put everybody to the side and say, This is who I am.
I was arrested 1965. I had come back from the merchant marines, got into conversations about the war. I had never heard of Vietnam until I was in the merchant marines in constitution square in Athens, and I picked up the New York Herald or the International Herald Tribune and there was my first introduction of the word Vietnam.
Growing up in New York, I was sort of shocked when I realized that my children are Californians. They are 14 years old, and I explain to them frequently that they will never realize the glory of a snow day. You wake up and the world says, 'Oops, it's too much fun to go to school, you've got to stay home and deal with the snow!'
Years from now, years and years, one of those ships will bring me back, me and my nine Brazilian brats. Because yes, they must see this, these lights, the river -- I love New York, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it.
Part of the oncoming demise (of New York during its terrible fiscal crisis) is that none of us can simply believe it. We were always the best and the strongest of cities, and our people were vital to the teeth. Knock them down eight times and they would get up with that look in the eye which suggests the fight has barely begun.
Even to be flown out to New York was mind boggling for me, and signing with Columbia was great because they really understood my vision. Of all the labels that I met, they were the ones that really seemed to understand that I was really about the music, the writing, and the lyrics, so it was really fulfilling to sign with them.
I love just going out and sitting down in the park along with the thousands of other people who apparently have no work to do during the day. People come up to me, but they are generally really nice. New York makes it easier, for me at least. People manage to be enthusiastic and sort of sane at the same time. And that’s lovely.
I was 22 and had worked on Wall Street for a year, and quit my job. I bought a motorcycle and sort of had this fantasy that I'd go cross-country like 'Easy Rider.' I went from New York to L.A., and on the way back, I stopped in Chicago and saw a friend of mine who was into improv. And I figured it might be fun to give it a shot.
It was one of those perfect New York October afternoons, when the explosion of oranges and yellows against the bright blue sky makes you feel like your life is passing through your fingers, that you've felt this autumn-feeling before and you'll probably get to feel it again, but one day you won't anymore, because you'll be dead.
When I got my very first phone call that I'd hit the 'New York Times' list, I had a small rush of 'I've made it!' But the next morning, it occurred to me I didn't know what it was, so I called my agent and asked what being a 'New York Times' bestselling author really meant. He informed me that I was now a thousand pound gorilla.
These are such First World problems, but there's a certain claustrophobia to New York. You don't escape in the East Village, but it at least feels full of camaraderie and youth - or full of camaraderie and youth in an East Village that is as full of Chase banks and Starbucks as the Upper West Side, or anywhere else in Manhattan.
I don't necessarily notice too much of a change in the sense of the kind of matches that I have in say a Los Angeles as opposed to a New York City. The big difference that I notice, and this is what all love as New York city and Philadelphia has treated me fantastically, but man, you cannot screw up in Philadelphia and New York.
For me, growing up in New York, it started with Elvis Costello and the Clash and then got into louder things like Bad Brains and Stimulators, because those were, like, the local bands. Then I started getting into bands from England like the Slits. I remember seeing Gang of Four at Irving Plaza; that was a really big show for me.
If you don't go to Broadway, you're a fool. On Broadway, off Broadway, above Broadway, below Broadway, go! Don't tell me there isn't something wonderful playing. If I'm home in New York at night, I'm either at a Broadway or an Off Broadway show. We're in the theater capital of the world, and if you don't get it, you're an idiot.
Improv definitely made me a better auditioner, without a doubt. We did do an audition semester in grad school, and that was helpful for those times that you have a script and you have a few days to prepare it, to really work on sides. But the auditions I was doing in New York, if you got it the night before, you were very lucky.
I didn't do well in high school, but I took photography, and I loved being able to capture moments. It led to more and more photography, and fashion was the angle into photography for me. It was incredible to see photographs by Irving Penn or Helmut Newton. I was really intrigued by that, and that's what led me to New York City.
September 11 was, and remains, above all an immense human tragedy. But September 11 also posed a momentous and deliberate challenge not just to America but to the world at large. The target of the terrorists was not only New York and Washington but the very values of freedom, tolerance and decency which underpin our way of life.
I think that, at the end of the day, I'm drawn to a certain level of ambiguous storytelling that requires hard thought and work in the same way that the 'New York Times' crossword puzzle does: Sometimes you just want to put it down or throw it out the window, but there's a real rewarding sense if you feel like you've cracked it.
New York was always more expensive than any other place in the United States, but you could live in New York - and by New York, I mean Manhattan. Brooklyn was the borough of grandparents. We didn't live well. We lived in these horrible places. But you could live in New York. And you didn't have to think about money every second.
I live in the Village right near NYU, which is taking over most of the Village. I've lived there for most of my time in New York. One of the things I like about the Village is, it's considered the kind of area where you can't have skyscrapers or, actually, many tall buildings. So you can see the sky which, I think, is a benefit.
Former New York Governor George Pataki may enter the race for president. It's not definite, but he tweeted that he'll announce his 2016 plans on May 28 in New Hampshire. Well, what's he gonna do, go to New Hampshire to say he's NOT running? That's like getting down on one knee and saying, 'I think it's time to see other people.'
After my performance 'The Artist is Present (2010)' at MoMA in New York, many scientists became interested in why so many people who sat across from me began to cry. I was incredibly moved by this experience also, and was very curious to know what happens in our brains when we spend time not talking, just looking at one another.
The New York Times is reporting that back in the '60s, presidential candidate Howard Dean used a letter from a doctor about a back condition to keep himself out of the draft in Vietnam and then spent 10 months skiing. Well it sounds like he's done the impossible. He actually made Bill Clinton and George Bush look like war heroes.
My brother Trev went to the Professional Performing Arts School in New York, and he used to do his monologues and stuff and rehearse in our apartment. So I used to hear him all the time doing these things over and over and over. And when I was a little girl, I used to soak up everything - like anything anyone did, I soaked it up.
You know, in Los Angeles, you're constantly in your car, you're sealed up, you're not walking around. Whereas in New York, after a while, all your stuff is kind of public, in one way or the other. I'm not saying either one of those is bad; they're both great for a very specific kind of comedian. And I'm glad that they both exist.
I am not a religious person myself, but I did look for nature. I had spent my first sabbatical in New York City. Looked for something different for the second one. Europe and the U.S. didn't really feel enticing because I knew them too well. So Asia it was. The most beautiful landscapes I had seen in Asia were Sri Lanka and Bali.
Recording in Nashville was absolutely essential to get the sound, the musicians, the atmosphere, the warmth... There are just cult places like that in the world, like Chicago for the blues or New York for jazz. Nothing sounds the same in Nashville as it does elsewhere. Nashville is the Mecca of country music and everyone knows it.
I think the best actors in the world are here in New York City. And this city is just so vibrant the energy is just phenomenal. Great crews here. All the technicians, all the artists that work in this industry. I've just been very happy with the body that we've been able to do, especially those films we shot here in New York City.
I think the 'New York Times' reviews overall tend to overlook popular fiction, whether you're a man, woman, white, black, purple or pink. I think there are a lot of readers who would like to see reviews that belong in the range of commercial fiction rather than making the blanket assumption that all commercial fiction is unworthy.
Selling your apartment in New York is like dating a manic-depressive.. you get used to cycles of elation and despondency. Every time someone would come to see the apartment, there was the thrill of the date. You want to be presentable, so you clean the place up, make sure it smells good, put on some mood lighting and mellow music.
In 1949, when I was 2, my family moved from Yonkers, NY, to a development of brick houses in Elmont, a Long Island suburb of New York City. What I remember most about the house was the glider on our porch. I used to sit there evenings close to my father, Victor, as he talked about the moon and the stars. He taught me to dream big.
[Kenneth Koch] taught children in public schools in New York City to write poems and told them down worry about rhyming, don't worry about any of that stuff. You know, write a poem where you mention three colors and make it five lines - or he would just give them, you know, little strategies. And, man, they wrote some great poems.
Man will survive as a species for one reason: He can adapt to the destructive effects of our power-intoxicated technology and of our ungoverned population growth, to the dirt, pollution and noise of a New York or Tokyo. And that is the tragedy. It is not man the ecological crisis threatens to destroy but the quality of human life.
The first trip I remember taking was on the train from Virginia up to New York City, watching the summertime countryside rolling past the window. They used white linen tablecloths in the dining car in those days, and real silver. I love trains to this day. Maybe that was the beginning of my fixation with leisurely modes of travel.
I remember on page one of The New York Times the article about Fred Leuchter. The heading was "Can Capital Punishment Be Humane" and it was the story about an electric chair repairman and execution machine designer. And then buried in the back of the paper was the fact that Fred Leuchter had also been involved in holocaust denial.
My God, the suburbs! They encircled the city's boundaries like enemy territory and we thought of them as a loss of privacy, a cesspool of conformity and a life of indescribable dreariness in some split-level village where the place name appeared in the New York Times only when some bored housewife blew off her head with a shotgun.
Mortal City was really influenced by geography. [The song] "The Ocean" is the Pacific Northwest. Southern California and New York also figure into songs, and Iowa. "February" is very much about New England. "Mortal City" is Philadelphia. The whole album is this anthropomorphized landscape where the metaphors live in this geography.
I'm definitely bicoastal, but I have to say, it's easier to live in New York than in L.A. I feel like people respect other people's space a bit more here. Everyone has the right to that freedom, right? Everyone has that right. It's freezing in New York right now. In L.A., it's sunny. But I would choose freezing over being followed.
Woody Allen was the reason I wanted to move to New York City and one of the reasons I wanted to make films. I felt that I understood his films, and I love them so much. When you're starting out, certainly, you have this sense of wanting to talk back to people who have influenced you, and I always wanted to talk back to Woody Allen.
As you know, I'm a black girl out of the projects of New York City, raised in a single parent home because my parents divorced very very young... welfare and homeless at four and then again at 16 and just not having the things or the necessary tools that society would say I needed to have in order to be any kind of success in life.
The danger of Iran is if you listen to what the Ayatollah is saying, to what the Mullahs are saying, rational self-preservation is not their objective. If Iran acquires a nuclear weapon the odds are unacceptably high that that weapon will not be simply stockpiled, but it will be detonated over Tel Aviv, or New York, or Los Angeles.
[Immigrating] didn't burn out my desire to travel, though that can happen. There's nothing like immigration to make you want to just stay put. But what I think of as home is this life between Santo Domingo and the parts of New Jersey and New York City that were my childhood, so in my mind it's like home is all those things combined.
The contrasts between what is spent today to educate a child in the poorest New York City neighborhoods, where teacher salaries are often even lower than the city averages, and spending levels in the wealthiest suburban areas are daunting challenges to any hope New Yorkers might retain that even semblances of fairness still prevail.
During my eleven years as a New York City public school teacher, I saw firsthand the impact that poverty has on the classroom. In low-income neighborhoods like Sunset Park, where I taught, students as young as five years old enter school affected by the stresses often created by poverty: domestic violence, drug abuse, gang activity.
I was a bartender in New York and I overheard this girl saying she made $3000 doing a commercial. A kid at work told me, 'Hey, I know this director and he'd really like you!'. So I walked into this guy's office and was like 'I was thinking maybe I could make $3000' and he hired me for commercials, short films, like 15 jobs in a row.
When I was 16, I was in Boston and some friends said, 'You want to go to New York?,' I went with my roommate... These guys said, 'We're going to this club. Just don't go in the washroom.' It was CBGB. I had no idea what it was or the history of all the music. All I knew was this was my first 21-and-over club and I managed to get in!
We need to shut down this Gitmo prison? Well, don't shut it down - we just need to start an advertising campaign. We need to call it, 'Gitmo, the Muslim resort.' Any resort that treated people like this would have ads all over the 'New York Times' trying to get people to come down and visit for some R&R, for some rest and relaxation.