"If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere," goes the song. And those who have made it in New York love it the most. My City, My New York, published in October 2011, gathers New York celebrities talking about their home city. It's a great book about a great city.
My City, My New York was written by lifelong New Yorker Jeryl Brunner. She's a journalist who specializes in celebrities and lifestyle, and is a longtime author at Honeymoons.about.com.
"New York is a nonstop, intense, thrilling experience," says Jeryl. "New Yorkers themselves are as unique as the city's landscape. And the celebrities who choose to live here contribute their own electricity to the current. In My City, My New York, they tell you what they love about their home." Ten famed Gothamites in Jeryl's book are featured on this page; scores more bold-faced New Yorkers contributed to My City, My New York.
- Read all the reasons why New York is the capital of the world
Quotes reprinted from My City, My New York: Famous New Yorkers Share Their Favorite Places, by Jeryl Brunner. Copyright 2012. Published by Globe Pequot Press, Guilford, CT.
My City, My New York by Jeryl Brunner
My City, My New York: Famous New Yorkers Share Their Favorite Places was written by Jeryl Brunner and published in October 2011 by Globe Pequot Press.
- Order your copy of My City, My New York >>
Woody Allen, Movie Auteur
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"New York is a great city. It's a great city and I've been to all of them and I've worked in many of them…and New York is New York. Even when you love these other cities – which I do – the people in those other cities all want to come to New York. It's just great. It has a nervous excitement and a creative excitement that's unequaled anywhere…I live in New York and I have many, many favorite things."
- Read about the iconic New York films of Woody Allen
Michael Bloomberg, 108th Mayor of New York City
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"What do I love to do in New York? Walking the streets. You can go through so many neighborhoods. And what should somebody do coming here from out of town? Walk the busy streets in all the five boroughs."
- Cross that bridge when you come to it…the Brooklyn Bridge
Wynton Marsalis, Founder of Jazz at Lincoln Center
© Emin Kuliyev/ Shutterstock.com.
"I have books on all the great New York skyscrapers, and I take my kids to see all of them. There has never been anything like New York on the face of Planet Earth. They can say what they want about ancient Rome, but it wasn’t like this."
- See the world's tallest buildings, including New York's incomparable Empire State Building
Al Roker, Co-host of The Today Show
© Courtesy of Sarah Cedar Miller, Central Park Conservancy.
"The great thing about Central Park is its vast diversity. The southern end is more urban. Then you get to the northern end and feel like you could be in some primeval forest. You can hear rushing water from a brook…[the park has] a little bit of everything."
- Find out all the New York things you can do in Central Park
Kelly Killoren Bensimon, The Real Housewives of New York City
Who can resist NYC? ©
"The corner at Spring and Lafayette Streets is my favorite corner in America. It's filled with really interesting people – hot chefs, babies, teenagers, fashion people, skater boys. It's an eclectic, fun neighborhood…for me it embodies what New York is – understated, cool, educated, and interesting."
- Read about Kelly's top spot in Manhattan, the exhilarating Soho
Kyle MacLachlan, Actor
Balthazar restaurant © Courtesy of Sylvia Paret.
"New York is a lot about restaurants, and going to a great place to eat is always wonderful. I have many friends who are in that business…it's life and it's fun. The atmosphere of New York is the best in the world."
- Discover New Yorkers' favorite foods and restaurants
Judy Collins, Singer-Songwriter
Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1914, by Irving Underhill © Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons.
"My New York fix…includes, without a doubt, the Metropolitan Museum of Art…I moved to New York in 1963 and the Metropolitan Museum of Art became a destination for me almost immediately. I have had a close connection with it ever since…I gravitate toward the Impressionists. I have to get my fix of Van Gogh, Matisse, and Gauguin."
- Read up on Jackson Pollock and other downtowners who led the postwar "New York School" of painting, also called Abstract Expressionism
Bill Pullman, Actor
St. Luke's in the Field © Courtesy of Hannah Frank.
"As soon as you go outside your door, you feel like there's this big river of humanity, and it's mesmerizing…I'm in the Village. And lately I’ve really been enjoying St. Luke's in the Field…the church from 1822. The scale of the buildings, the small size of them, reminds me of being in Manhattan 200 years ago…if I have a free morning then I'll have a picnic there."
- Meet New York poet and man about town, Dylan Thomas, memorialized at St. Luke's in the Field
Chris Noth, Actor
Times Square never, ever sleeps © Karen Tina Harrison.
"What makes New York unique is its history, tradition, culture, architecture, and people. There's the diversity of character of the people – that's the spirit of New York. I like places that represent what New York has been for decades."
- How much do you know about New York's matchless Times Square?
James Caan, Actor
The Unisphere in Queens © Karen Tina Harrison.
"I was born and raised in Queens, I love the life here. But mostly, I like the moral code about loyalty and friends that somehow is embedded in you when you are from New York."
- Encounter New York's amazing "International Express," the #7 subway train through Queens that you catch on Manhattan's 42nd St.
