Christa Avampato

There’s a saying that goes, “Leave California before you get too soft and leave New York before you get too hard.” Being back in NYC a couple of days, I realize that we can get a lot further in New York if we soften. The truth is that New York is tougher than any of us. It’s tougher than all of us put together. Fight it all you want; in the end it’s going to win. It always has.

To get along here, to delight in all the magic that this place has to offer, we have to flex and adjust. To stay centered, we have to find and maintain our own center. It’s challenging, but possible. As we lift our heads up from the pavement, as we let go, we can really see all of the gifts around us. Then instead of being worn out by New York, we can take its nonstop energy and make it ours. The beat of the city becomes the beat of our own hearts if only we will let it in.

Today I woke up in my own bed, finally back home in my town. I plan to spend the next few days walking around, saying hello to all my favorite haunts, seeing my friends, and being grateful – grateful that I finally realized that the home I’ve sought for so long is the home I’ve had all along. It’s not the right place for everyone and there are plenty of things about it that need improvement. While there are many other places that I love to visit, New York is home. And that feels wonderful.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from others who loved New York as much as I do:

“As for New York City, it is a place apart. There is not its match in any other country in the world.” 
– Pearl S. Buck

“Each man reads his own meaning into New York.” – Meyer Berger

“I think you know that when an American stays away from New York too long something happens to him. Perhaps he becomes a little provincial, a little dead and afraid.” – Sherwood Anderson

“Everybody ought to have a lower East Side in their life.” – Irving Berlin

“New York is the only real city-city.” – Truman Capote

“New York is the biggest collection of villages in the world.” – Alistair Cooke

“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.” – Paul Goldberger

“New York city, the incomparable, the brilliant star city of cities, the forty-ninth state, a law unto itself, the Cyclopean Paradox, the inferno with no-out-of bounds, the supreme expression of both the miseries and the splendors of contemporary civilization, the Macedonia of the United States. It meets the most severe test that may be applied to definition of a metropolis – it stays up all night. But also it becomes a small town when it rains.” – John Gunther

“There is no place like it, no place with an atom of its glory, pride, and exultancy.” – Walt Whitman

“At night… the streets become rhythmical perspectives of glowing dotted lines, reflections hung upon them in the streets as the wistaria hangs its violet racemes on its trellis. The buildings are shimmering verticality, a gossamer veil, a festive scene-prop hanging there against the black sky to dazzle, entertain, amaze.” – Frank Lloyd Wright