“All cities are mad: but the madness is gallant. All cities are beautiful, but the beauty is grim.”

“CITY OF THE WORLD (FOR ALL RACES ARE HERE, ALL THE LANDS OF THE EARTH MAKE CONTRIBUTIONS HERE), CITY OF THE SEA! CITY OF WHARVES AND STORES - CITY OF TALL FACADES OF MARBLE AND IRON! PROUD AND PASSIONATE CITY - METTLESOME, MAD, EXTRAVAGANT CITY!”

“The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.”

“In the songs all knights are gallant, all maids are beautiful, and the sun is always shining.”

“New York remains what it has always been : a city of ebb and flow, a city of constant shifts of population and economics, a city of virtually no rest. It is harsh, dirty, and dangerous, it is whimsical and fanciful, it is beautiful and soaring - it is not one or another of these things but all of them, all at once, and to fail to accept this paradox is to deny the reality of city existence.”

“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius”