Top 100 The New Yorker Quotes
#1. 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.
Jamaica Kincaid
#2. 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
#3. I aspired from early on to write a novel, to be in the 'New Yorker,' to be on Broadway, and at least in a fleeting way, I got all those things.
Mark O'Donnell
#4. Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim.
E.B. White
#5. 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.'
David Sedaris
#6. The most offensive thing that ever occurred in 'The New Yorker' would be, like, the mildest thing at a Chris Rock concert.
Robert Mankoff
#7. When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.
[As attributed by Alastair Reid in Neruda and Borges, The New Yorker, June 24, 1996; as well as in The Talk of the Town, The New Yorker, July 7, 1986]
Jorge Luis Borges
#8. 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
#9. As Adam Gopnik remarked in The New Yorker, "Post-modernist art is, above all, post-audience art." In
David Bayles
#10. 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.
Russell Baker
#11. I wanted to be a literary writer, so I wrote story after story and sent them to 'The New Yorker.'
Diane Mott Davidson
#12. I have published in 'The New Yorker,' 'Holiday,' 'Life,' 'Mademoiselle,' 'American Heritage,' 'Horizon,' 'The Ladies Home Journal,' 'The Kenyon Review,' 'The Sewanee Review,' 'Poetry,' 'Botteghe Oscure,' the 'Atlantic Monthly,' 'Harper's.'
Paul Engle
#13. Thou shalt not live within thy means
Nor on plain water and raw greens.
If thou must choose
Between the chances, choose the odd;
Read The New Yorker, trust in God;
And take short views.
W. H. Auden
#14. 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'.
Michael Wolf
#15. Every writer at the New Yorker is smarter than me.
Bob Dylan
#16. Dad and I did not care at all for your story in The New Yorker ... [I]t does seem, dear, that this gloomy kind of story is what all you young people think about these days. Why don't you write something to cheer people up?
Shirley Jackson
#17. General literature without the humbug," was the New Yorker's original mission.
Harold Holzer
#18. I'm not a reporter but the 'New Yorker' treats everyone like a reporter.
David Sedaris
#19. The title of the poems was The Only Bar in Dixon. We sent it out to The New Yorker on a fluke, and they took them and printed all three in the same issue.
James Welch
#20. In New York, all the crews read 'The New Yorker.' In Los Angeles, they don't know from 'The New Yorker.'
Bruce Eric Kaplan
#21. Feeling is taboo, especially in New York. I read in some little magazine the other day that The New Yorker and The New York Times were sclerotic, meaning, "completely turned to rock." The critics here are that way.
James Purdy
#22. My parents put the New Yorker in my crib. I saw Vogue and Vanity Fair around the house before I could read.
Richard Avedon
#23. 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.
Bruce Eric Kaplan
#24. The dangerous man is the one who has only one idea, because then he'll fight and die for it.
[As quoted in The New Yorker, April 25, 2011]
Francis Crick
#25. 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
#26. I don't profess any religion; I don't think it's possible that there is a God; I have the greatest difficulty in understanding what is meant by the words 'spiritual' or 'spirituality.'
[Interview, The New Yorker, Dec. 26, 2005]
Philip Pullman
#27. When I took over 'The New Yorker,' there was a very, very good, smart staff in place.
Tina Brown
#28. After the phone call from The New Yorker, I walked more than a mile to church to thank God. But then I told God I would talk to Him another time and darted home.
Uwem Akpan
#29. It was actually an Israeli cartoonist, Nurit Karlin, who made me think that I could draw for 'The New Yorker.' I saw her work published in the magazine in the early 1970s - she was the only woman working as a cartoonist at 'The New Yorker' at the time.
Liza Donnelly
#30. I'm an unabashed fan of 'The New Yorker.' I do feel proud when I see my artwork in there.
Adrian Tomine
#31. Jincy Willett, Sam Lipsyte, Flannery O'Connor, and George Saunders. Oh, and I love Paul Rudnick in The New Yorker.
Pamela Paul
#32. Maybe it's wrong-footed trying to fit people into the world, rather than trying to make the world a better place for people.
[as quoted in "Brain Gain" by Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, 4/27/09 issue]
Paul McHugh
#33. I think many articles in the New Yorker have a strong point of view, but they are so rigorously fact-checked. I wouldn't call them objective, but they feel fair.
Alex Gibney
#34. Just because you read a report in the 'New York Times,' the 'Economist,' or, yes, 'The New Yorker' doesn't make it true. But we do know that a few people have evaluated that story with what strikes me as fairly objective standards of reason.
Michael Specter
#35. '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.
John Lahr
#36. Sometimes with 'The New Yorker,' they have grammar rules that just don't feel right in my mouth.
David Sedaris
#37. 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.
Rachel Sklar
#38. After the New Yorker piece I decided that I would never give another interview to anyone on any subject and that I would keep away from all places where I would be likely to be interviewed. If you say nothing it is difficult for someone to get it wrong.
Ernest Hemingway,
#39. '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.'
Gillian Jacobs
#40. I used to never miss the 'New Yorker' or 'New York.' Now I never bother.
Dan Jenkins
#41. If you appear in the 'Atlantic' or 'Harper's' or the 'New Yorker,' by God, you must be a writer, because everybody says so.
Kurt Vonnegut
#42. If sometimes there seems to be a sort of sameness of sound in The New Yorker, it probably can be traced to the magazine's copydesk, which is a marvelous fortress of grammatical exactitude and stylish convention.
E.B. White
#43. I never studied art, but taught myself to draw by imitating the New Yorker cartoonists of that day, instead of doing my homework.
Bil Keane
#44. Eventually, my highbrow parents, who so hated the Eisenhower suburban culture of the 1950s that the only magazines they subscribed to were 'The Atlantic' and 'The New Yorker,' broke down and got 'Life' magazine.
Sally Mann
#45. Back in 1992, I had my first story accepted by 'The New Yorker.'
George Saunders
#46. 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.
David Remnick
#47. Eleanor Gordon was the most sophisticated in their crowd. She read The New Yorker.
Judy Blume
#48. It is in the nature of the New Yorker to be as topical as possible, on a level that is often small in scale and playful in intention.
Brendan Gill
#49. 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.'
Bill Bryson
#50. 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.
Peter Beard
#51. 'The New Yorker' didn't invent the magazine cartoon, but it did really establish it.
Robert Mankoff
#52. 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.'
Emma Donoghue
#53. Although it's not something I'm particularly proud of, I'm willing to admit that, in addition to whiling away the long stretches of time in the air and waiting in airport lounges reading the 'New Yorker' and 'New York Times' on my Kindle, I've picked up the occasional tabloid magazine.
Derek Blasberg
#54. I wasn't aware I'd write the novel when I wrote the New Yorker story either. And the narration of their construction in 10:04 is fiction, however flickering.
Ben Lerner
#55. Publication in 'The New Yorker' meant everything, and it's no exaggeration to say that it changed my life.
Daniel Alarcon
#56. We have a policy at The New Yorker, .. That is, if someone doesn't want to be profiled, we drop it. I would like you to show me the same courtesy.
William Shawn
#57. Even if I never get out of Clover, even if I never get into Northwestern or write for the New Yorker, even if these are just delusions occupying my time, thank God they are, because a life without meaning, without drive or focus, without dreams or goals, isn't life worth living.
Chris Colfer
#58. 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
#59. I still can't get over the idea that respectable adults now go to see superhero movies and that such films get reviewed in the 'New Yorker.' Clearly, I am seriously out of step with the times.
Chris Ware
#60. 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
#61. I knew I didn't want to come out in the 'New Yorker'; it just felt wrong. It needed an African conversation.
Binyavanga Wainaina
#62. 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.
Noah Baumbach
#63. The debate about the war seems pretty robust and free. Many publications, from the New Yorker to the Nation, feel perfectly comfortable printing anti-American articles and that's fine. That's what the First Amendment is all about.
Rich Lowry
#64. Cartoons, often, that you do for the New Yorker don't appear for months afterwards, and the record for that is a cartoon that was bought by James Stevenson in 1987 and didn't appear until 2000.
Robert Mankoff
#65. The narrative songs were well-written, like an article in The New Yorker. They're nice and pat. They're more like I'm just showing I can do that when I write a song like that. It's not my true calling.
Stephen Malkmus
#66. 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.
James Balog
#67. 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
#68. I watched the couples walking around the lake, 'Maybe it's the New Yorker in me. I'm too used to rushing around. But everyone here is so relaxed, it's like they're moving in slow motion.'
'Why should they rush? They're not going anywhere.
Elizabeth Bard
#69. At first, writing for The New Yorker was very scary to me. I couldn't imagine anything that I would write in that typeface.
David Sedaris
#70. 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.
Nate Silver
#71. The art editor in charge of the covers at the 'New Yorker' is Francoise Mouly. She's very familiar with the eccentricities and personalities of cartoonists, so working with her is very easy.
Adrian Tomine
#72. I would kind of, you know, go stand next to some unlucky guy and say eventually, Hi, I'm George. You know, I'm with The New Yorker. I'm a liberal. I'm somewhat left of Gandhi. Do you want to talk? And, you know, they always did.
George Saunders
#73. Speaking as a New Yorker, I found it (9/11 event] a shocking and terrifying event, particularly the scale of it. At bottom, it was an implacable desire to do harm to innocent people.
Edward Said
#74. I spent my childhood in New York, riding on subways and buses. And you know what you learn if you're a New Yorker? The world doesn't owe you a damn thing.
Lauren Bacall
#75. Last summer had meant lots of Sam Adams Summer Ale by herself on hot weekend days when it seemed like just her and the Dominican Day parade.
Stephanie Clifford
#76. A real New Yorker likes the sound of a garbage truck in the morning.
R.L. Stine
#77. A Michigander can be every bit as prickly as a New Yorker, just not out loud. The Midwesterner's credo: keep it to yourself.
James Hynes
#78. I grew up in New York City - I grew up surrounded by every sound that you imagine can come from a New Yorker. All of the different boroughs and all of the different sounds.
Maggie Wheeler
#79. The brevity of our lives breeds a kind of temporal parochialism - an ignorance of or an indifference to those planetary gears which turn more slowly than our own.
Kathryn Schulz
#80. A New Yorker is anyone who has the guts to really live in the city.
Rita Ora
#81. In a subway car, my skin would typically fall in the middle of the color spectrum. On street corners, tourists would ask me for directions. I was, in four and a half years, never an American; I was immediately a New Yorker.
Mohsin Hamid
#82. I have never been prouder to be a lifelong New Yorker than I am today with the passage of marriage equality.
Cyndi Lauper
#83. The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.
John Updike
#84. 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.
Corey Stoll
#85. In the end, the only thing the true New Yorker knows about New York is that it is unknowable.
Pete Hamill
#86. Then, gradually, women began to enter vet schools. By 1975, they represented half of all students; by 2000, nearly three-quarters - and most of them wanted to treat pets.
The New Yorker
#87. 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.
Natasha Lyonne
#88. You can always tell a rich New York girl from a poor one. And you can tell a rich Boston girl from a poor one. After all, that's what accents and manners are there for. But to the native New Yorker, the midwestern girls all looked and sounded the same. Sure, the
Amor Towles
#89. Miss Ross has room in her heart for the entire animal kingdom, she focusses principally on cats because she thinks they are victims of prejudice and bigotry.
The New Yorker
#90. I'm a New Yorker. I was there during 9/11 and I saw how, not only New York City stopped for a moment, we all took an inhale and exhale at the same time - the world united at that time, and it changed my life.
Aisha Hinds
#91. 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.
Al Franken
#93. 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.
Emory Cohen
#94. You can do what you like, sir, but I'll tell you this. New York is the true capital of America. Every New Yorker knows it, and by God, we always shall.
Edward Rutherfurd
#95. I'm a New Yorker, and I jaywalk with the best of them.
Sonia Sotomayor
#96. Beware: I'm unafraid to host a big spoiler party--a novel that can be truly "spoiled" by the summary of its plot is a novel that was already spoiled by that plot.
James Wood
#97. A natural New Yorker is a native of the present tense.
V.S. Pritchett
#98. I am a New Yorker, and 7:00 A.M. is a civilized hour to finish the day, not to start it.
Sonia Sotomayor
#99. 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.
Carl Paladino
#100. Chandler again: "I have never liked anyone who disliked cats, because I've always found an element of acute selfishness in their dispositions.
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