New Yorker Magazine Quotes

When I see a garden in flower, then I believe in God for a second. But not the rest of the time ~ Svetlana Alexievich

I've got a better idea," says my mother. "Tell me about what you did today. Tell me about New York." So I do, I tell the lifelong New Yorker who chucked it for the woods about the streets of the city: how the subway was so crowded this morning I had to let four trains pass in a row and I was a half hour late to work; how I had a meeting in Times Square and I saw an army of painted topless women posing with tourists for money; how I saw two people dressed up as Disney characters get into a fistfight; how I ate a hot dog from a stand after my client meeting bombed and when I finished it I ate another, on one of the chairs scattered in Bryant Park. A string quartet was playing nearby, under a sponsor banner. "The music part was the part that saved me," I say. "All of it would have saved me," says my mother. ~ Jami Attenberg

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. ~ Abel Ferrara

I'm sorry about the smell - that's sort of a litter-box issue. It's tough to have eight cats in a studio apartment, but I think while you're spending the night here - the first of many, many passion-filled nights you'll undoubtedly wish to spend here - you'll find that it's well worth the smell to have the selfless companionship of these seventeen reeking, dander-encrusted animals. I said "eight" before when I meant to say "seventeen." That's the number of cats that I have. ~ The New Yorker

You know how it is - you start with one tiger, then you get another and another, then a few are born and a few die, and you start to lose track of details like exactly how many tigers you actually have. ~ The New Yorker

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. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

New Yorker, the collection would, in many ways, define us as a couple. ~ Nicholas Sparks

Middle-class Americans might be invited to join a new elite by attacks against the corruption of the established rich. The New Yorker Cadwallader Colden, in his Address to the Freeholders in 1747, attacked the wealthy as tax dodgers unconcerned with the welfare of others (although he himself was wealthy) and spoke for the honesty and dependability of "the midling rank of mankind" in whom citizens could best trust "our liberty & Property." This was to become a critically important rhetorical device for the rule of the few, who would speak to the many of "our" liberty, "our" property, "our" country. ~ Howard Zinn

Let's say honorary favorite New Yorker is John Lennon, and favorite real New Yorker is Biggie, because he's the best. ~ Paul Dano

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

The older I get the more grateful I am not to be told how everything comes out. ~ Mavis Gallant

In the New Yorker library, I have long been shelved between Nadine Gordimer and Brendan Gill; an eerie little space nestled between high seriousness of purpose and legendary lightness of touch. ~ Adam Gopnik

I see it for what is is, now. It is a house built on ashes. Ashes of the life Granddad shared with Gran, ashes of the maple from which the tire swing flew, ashes of the old Victorian house with the porch and the hammock. The new house is built on the grave of all the trophies and symbols of the family: the New Yorker cartoons, the taxidermy, the embroidered pillows, the family portraits. ~ E. Lockhart

Look, there's no denying that comics have moved dramatically into the mainstream in North American culture in the last 10 years, and for someone like me who's always tried to make a living at it, it's been great, I'm very grateful for it. But at the same time, it's not a subculture-y thing anymore; it's something that's in the New York Times and the New Yorker. ~ Adrian Tomine

If for some reason you are unsure where to go, all you have to do is stand there looking lost, and within seconds a helpful New Yorker will approach to see if you have any "spare" change. ~ Dave Barry

But the truth is, the ten or twenty minutes I was somebody's mother were black magic. There is no adventure I would trade them for; there is no place I would rather have seen.

-Thanksgiving in Mongolia, The New Yorker, November 18, 2013 Issue ~ Ariel Levy

I'm reading a bunch of fiction by Afghan and Iraq War veterans for a New Yorker piece. There hasn't been that much, but it's starting to come out, and some of the fiction is really good. ~ George Packer

I see and write things first as an artist, second as a woman, and third as a New Yorker. All three have built-in perspectives that aren't neutral. ~ Laurie Anderson

I would absolutely identify as a New Yorker by nature. I grew up in Detroit. There was not a bone in my body that even considered staying in Detroit for the rest of my life. ~ Kristen Bell

I am the soul stretching into
the furthest reaches of my fingers
and beyond

from "Last Words," The New Yorker, Poems: December 13, 1982 Issue. ~ Philip Levine

Every returning New Yorker asks the question: Is this still my city? I have a ready answer, cloaked in obstinate despair: It is. And if it's not, I will love it all the more. I will love it to the point where it becomes mine again. ~ Gary Shteyngart

But one sets of grandparents lived on Davidson Avenue in the Bronx and one lived in Manhattan and I had an aunt and uncle in Queens, so in my heart I was a New Yorker. ~ Jason Alexander

I live a very quiet life, although I'm very urban and a diehard New Yorker. ~ Armand Assante

[…] remember,
loneliness is still time spent
with the world.

from "Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong," The New Yorker: Poems. May 4, 2015 Issue. ~ Ocean Vuong

I was just reviewed by Robert Gottlieb, who was my editor at The New Yorker, and he sort of wondered at the fact that I still need to exorcise my parents at my age. I think he makes a basic mistake in thinking that exorcism can ever be total. The exorcism of your parents will still be occurring on your own deathbed. ~ Francine Du Plessix Gray

All my other current friends were "intellectuals"––Chad the Nietzschean anthropologist, Carlo Marx and his nutty surrealist low-voiced serious staring talk, Old Bull Lee and his critical anti-everything drawl––or else they were slinking criminals like Elmer Hassel, with that hip sneer; Jane Lee the same, sprawled on the Oriental cover of her couch, sniffing at the New Yorker. But Dean's intelligence was every bit as formal and shining and complete, without the tedious intellectualness. And his "criminality" was not something that sulked and sneered; it was a wild yea-saying overburst of American joy; it was Western, the west wind, an ode from the Plains, something new, long prophesied, long a-coming. Besides, all my New York friends were in the negative, nightmare position of putting down society and giving their tired bookish or political or psychoanalytical reasons, but Dean just raced in society, eager for bread and love; he didn't care one way or the other. ~ Jack Kerouac

I am aware of myself as a four-hundred-year-old woman, born in the captivity of a colonial, pre-industrial oral culture and living now as a contemporary New Yorker. ~ Bharati Mukherjee

The agent sighed. „Mr. Little, do you know why horror novels usually revolve around the protagonist and his family?"
Ben didn't encourage him. It turned out the New Yorker didn't need it.
„Because horror is at its best when the stakes are intimate. There are no higher stakes than the people you love. ~ David Jacob Knight

I could live here forever. Maybe even become real New Yorker someday. ~ Candace Bushnell

I was just a guy who did adult or alternative comic books. And then suddenly to be, like, a New Yorker cover artist was a different thing. ~ Adrian Tomine

A true New Yorker never backs down, and I'm no exception. Holla! ~ Heather Thomson

I started out a die-hard New Yorker but really grew to love working in Los Angeles. Even though I originally wanted to do theater, TV presented more opportunities for me, which led me out west. ~ Becki Newton

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. ~ Bruce Eric Kaplan

Most of my work - including everything from my own comics to the covers I've drawn for 'The New Yorker' - is the result of taking some personal experience or observation and then fictionalizing it to a degree. ~ Adrian Tomine

ANOTHER TWILIGHT
Allow the point of the Croccodrillo
its hazy cypress trees in profile
Like a rough sketch for the Isle
of the Dead, as seen from yellow
stucco, his Villa Igea where Lawrence
finished "Sons and Lovers," wild thyme
scenting olive-grove grass, crime
scenery come back to more than once.
Again you're mirrored in lake shadow,
a white sail flaking on its turquoise
wavelets, keep awake by traffic noise
Along the Gardesana...and you know
that this beauty's unbearable as before
even if seen from its opposite shore. ~ Peter Robinson

Most of the streets in Manhattan go in just one direction. Some of the larger crosstown streets and some of the major north - south avenues have two-way traffic, but in general, the odd-numbered streets go west, toward the Hudson River, and the "evens go east," as Jane, the native New Yorker, taught me. ~ Lauren Graham

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

A community of seriously hip observers is a scary and depressing thing. ~ J.D. Salinger

The New Yorker has devoted itself for 59 years not only to facts and literal accuracy but to truth. And truth begins, journalistically, with the facts. ~ William Shawn

One of the greatest was the blonde, urbane Ina Claire, who seemed a Dorothy Parker story or New Yorker cartoon come to life. ~ Eve Golden

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. ~ Eric Alterman