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170 Ultimate New York Instagram Captions & Quotes!

Want ideas for Instagram captions about New York City and looking for the best quotes? New York is an incredible place to explore and take photos of – with it’s many breathtaking skyscrapers and iconic landmarks as well as picturesque viewpoints.

Think The Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Rockefeller Centre, Central Park, Broadway, Times Square, Brooklyn Bridge, Grand Central Station, Manhattan Skyline – there are honestly photo opportunities around every corner in New York!

New York is such an exciting city and is definitely high on many people’s bucket lists, whether they plan to visit during the warm weather or during the snowy magical time of Christmas.

The Big Apple, as NYC is also known, has inspired so many people – it has been featured in countless movies, songs, TV shows and books. There is a sense of hope and dreams in the air, and the energy in this city can’t be beaten.

If you’ve been to New York or are heading there you’ll find 170 phrases, inspiring quotes, captions, romantic lyrics and funny one-liners here about New York that will inspire you and fit perfectly with your Instagram pictures! This article features all the best New York captions, from short New York quotes to funny puns and more!

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THE ULTIMATE NEW YORK INSTAGRAM CAPTIONS!

Best Captions About New York City for Instagram

1. “New York is always a good idea!”

2. “Take me to New York.”

3. “Somewhere between living and dreaming, there’s New York.”

4. “You cannot stop New York City.”

5. “Anything is possible. This is New York.”

6. “Hello, New York. You’re looking gorgeous today.”

7. “New York, New Me.”

8. “New York, here we come!”

9. “New York is not a place. It’s a feeling.”

10. “If you follow your heart just right, it will get you to New York City.”

11. “Keep calm and go to New York.”

12. “Dear New York, I’ll never get over you.”

13. “I want to wake up in a city that never sleeps.”

14. “New York is calling and I must go.”

15. “Once upon a time in New York.”

16. “New York – The City of dreams.”

17. “Happiness is…. holding tickets that say New York!”

Short New York Instagram Captions

18. “New York is always in my mind.”

19. “The city that never sleeps.”

20. “Meet me in New York.”

21. “Enjoying every New York minute.”

22. “New York is a 24-hour city. It never stops.”

23. “You can leave New York, but it will never leave you.”

24. “Meanwhile, in New York…”

25. “I want to live as many lives as there are in New York City.”

26. “New York City is where your wildest dreams come true.”

27. “London is a mystery, NYC is an explanation.”

28. “New York: concrete jungle where dreams are made of.”

29. “Late nights, bright lights.”

30. “New York. It puts a spell on you.”

31. “New York is the city that other cities can only dream of being.”

32. “Welcome to the concrete jungle.”

33. “I went to New York to be born again.”

34. “These lights will inspire you.”

35. “Sleepless nights and city lights.”

36. “The sky is the limit.”

Read more: 550 Captions About Traveling

Short New York Quotes for Instagram

37. “I’m in a New York state of mind.”- Billy Joel

38. “New York is not a city – it’s a world.”- Iman

39. “New York to me means the world.” – Donna Karan

40. “This isn’t a fairytale. It’s New York City.” – Alex Flinn

41. “There is something in the New York air that makes sleep useless.”- Simone de Beauvoir

42. “I love New York.” – Hillary Clinton

43. “You haven’t lived until you died in New York.”- Alexander Woollcott  

44. “Give me the streets of Manhattan!”- Walt Whitman

45. “One can’t paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.”- Georgia O’Keefe

46. “Either you love New York or you are wrong.”

47. “I love New York on summer afternoons when everyone’s away.”- F. Scott Fitzgerald

48. “Things always change and New York teaches you that.” – Richard Hell

49. “I don’t like cities. But I like New York. Other places make me feel like a dork.”- Madonna

50. “New York is a diamond iceberg floating in river water.”- Truman Capote

51. “If London is a watercolour, New York is an oil painting.”- Peter Shaffer

Read more: 75 Best Inspirational Travel Adventure Quotes

Best New York Quotes for Instagram

52. “I get out of the taxi and it’s probably the only city which in reality looks better than on the postcards: New York.”- Milos Forman

53. “A hundred times I have thought: New York is a catastrophe, and fifty times: it is a beautiful catastrophe.”- Le Corbusier

54. “London is satisfied, Paris is resigned, but New York is always hopeful. Always it believes that something good is about to come off, and it must hurry to meet it.”- Dorothy Parker

55. “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

56. “There is more sophistication and less sense in New York than anywhere else on the globe.”- Elbert Hubbard

57. “The only people who can afford to be artists in New York are rich.”- Sophie Frances

58. “More than anything else New York is a city of superlatives, a place where the best, the brightest, the biggest is the norm.”- Marilyn J. Appleberg

59. “New York is really the place to be; to go to New York, you’re going to the centre of the world, the lion’s den.”- Zubin Mehta

60. “When I’m in New York, I just want to walk down the street and feel this thing, like I’m in a movie.”- Ryan Adams

Meaningful New York Captions for Instagram

61. “You’re going to make it happen. This is New York.”

62. “If you’re greedy for life, that’s what New York is all about. If you’re trying to get as much as you can every day, this city is the place to be.” – Pam Nelson

63. “One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.”- Tom Wolfe

64. “The wanderer in Manhattan must go forth with a certain innocence, because New York is best seen with innocent eyes.”- Pete Hamill

65. “I don’t like Los Angeles. The people are awful and terribly shallow, and everybody wants to be famous but nobody wants to play the game. I’m from New York. I will kill to get what I need.” – Lady Gaga

66. “I get out of the taxi and it’s probably the only city which in reality looks better than on the postcards, New York.” – Milos Forman

67. “New York had all the iridescence of the beginning of the world.”- F. Scott Fitzgerald

68. “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

69. “You can try to change New York, but it’s like Jay-Z says: Concrete bunghole where dreams are made up. There’s nothing you can do.”- Liz Lemon

Quotes About Living in New York City

70. “Once you have lived in New York and made it your home, no place else is good enough.”- John Steinbeck

71. “I think I was made to live in New York.”

72. “If you want to become a real New Yorker, there’s only one rule: You have to believe New York is, has been, and always will be the greatest city on earth. The center of the universe.”- Ellen R. Shapiro

73. “If a man can live in Manhattan, he can live anywhere.” – Arthur C. Clarke

74. “I moved to New York City for my health. I’m paranoid and it was the only place where my fears were justified.” – Anita Weiss

75. “Whoever is born in New York is ill-equipped to deal with any other city: all other cities seem, at best, a mistake, and, at worst, a fraud. No other city is so spitefully incoherent.”- James Baldwin

76. “I knew I couldn’t live in America and I wasn’t ready to move to Europe so I moved to an island off the coast of America – New York City.” – Spalding Gray

77. “I regret profoundly that I was not an American and not born in Greenwich Village. It might be dying, and there might be a lot of dirt in the air you breathe, but this is where it’s happening.” – John Lennon

Powerful New York NYC Captions for Instagram

78. “I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York’s skyline.”- Ayn Rand

79. “The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.” – John Updike

80. “It’s pretty cliched, but Times Square is just incredible. You really feel like you’re in the capital of the world.”- Timothy F. Cahill

81. “Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual.” – Angela Carter

82. “New Yorkers are born all over the country, and then they come to New York City and it hits them: oh, that’s who I am.”

83. “There’s something so romantic about being broke in New York. You gotta do it. You have to live there once without any money, and then you have to live there when you have money. Let me tell you, of the two, the latter is far better.”- Amy Poehler

84. “Something’s always happening here. If you’re bored in New York, it’s your own fault.”

85. “Each neighbourhood has its own beauty & idiosyncrasies that spark creativity.”

86. “I look out the window and I see the lights and the skyline and the people on the street rushing around looking for action, love, and the world’s greatest chocolate chip cookie, and my heart does a little dance.”- Nora Ephron

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Funny Quotes About New York

87. “New York is the only city in the world where you can get run down on the sidewalk by a pedestrian.”- Russell Baker

88. “Skyscraper National Park”- Kurt Vonnegut

89. “When it’s 100 degrees in New York, it’s 72 in Los Angeles. When it’s 30 degrees in New York, in Los Angeles it’s still 72. However, there are 6 million interesting people in New York, and only 72 in Los Angeles.”- Neil Simon

90. “The flag of New York City should be someone with four bags opening a door with their shoulder.”- Alex Baze

91. “Anytime four New Yorkers get into a cab together without arguing, a bank robbery has just taken place.”- Johnny Carson

92. “When you leave New York, you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough.”- Fran Lebowitz

Funny NYC New York Instagram Captions

93. “New York City is a tourist trap I don’t mind being in.”

94. “A bad day in New York City is still better than a good day anywhere else.”

95. “Someone tell Gossip Girl I’m here right now.”

96. “Someone asked me for directions, so you can call me a real New Yorker.”

97. “I’m just a little apple in the Big Apple.”

98. “Times Square’s so bright, I need to wear shades.”

99. “Bike like a New Yorker.”

More Good Captions & Quotes About New York City for Instagram

100. “Follow your heart, even if it takes you all the way to New York.”

102. “The people who say Las Vegas never sleeps must never have visited New York.”

103. “The diversity, the food, the culture, the constant change–New York City is truly one of the most inspiring places on the planet.” – XXMK

104. “I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York’s skyline. Particularly when one can’t see the details. Just the shapes.” – Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

105. “Take me to New York City.”

106. “New York, I love you.”

107. “Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window – no, I don’t feel how small I am – but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.” – Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

108. “Oh, New York.”

109. “My life didn’t begin until I got to New York.”

110. “It is a fact of big cities that one girl’s darkest how is always another’s moment of shining triumph, and New York is the biggest and cruelest city of them all.” – Anna Godbersen

111. “There is nothing prettier than a city at 5 AM with its empty streets and cold wind.”

Quotes From People Who Don’t Like New York City

112. “New York is appalling, fantastically charmless and elaborately dire.” – Henry James

113. “New York is a sucked orange.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

114. “On a New York subway you get fined for spitting, but you can throw up for nothing.” – Lewis Grizzard

115. “New York is a place where the rich walk, the poor drive Cadillac’s, and the beggars die of malnutrition with thousands of dollars hidden in their mattresses.” – Duke Ellington

116. “New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous.”

117. “Manhattan is an accumulation of possible disasters that never happen.” – Ed Koch

118. “Of course, in Los Angeles, everything is based on driving, even the killings. In New York, most people don’t have cars, so if you want to kill a person, you have to take the subway to their house. And sometimes on the way, the train is delayed and you get impatient, so you have to kill someone on the subway. That’s why there are so many subway murders; no one has a car.” – George Carlin

Romantic New York Love Quotes & Captions for Instagram

119. “If Louis was right, and you only get one great love, New York may just be mine. And I can’t have nobody talking shit about my boyfriend.”- Carrie Bradshaw

120. “I fell in love. His name is New York.”- Unknown

121. “I’m having an affair with New York.”

122. “New York has romanced me unlike anything else.” – Blake Lively

123. “Quite simply, I was in love with New York. I do not mean ‘love’ in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and you never love anyone quite that way again.”- Joan Didio

124. “People never forget two things: their first love and their first day in New York City.”

125. “If you follow your heart just right, it will get you to New York City.”- Unknown

126. “I love New York, even though it isn’t mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it.”- Truman Capote

Interesting Quotes About New York City

127. “There’s an inherent energy in New York City that it’s famous for. It makes you want to get up and do a million things all day and stay up all night.”

128. “New York is a different country. Maybe it ought to have a separate government. Everybody thinks differently, they just don’t know what the hell the rest of the United States is.” – Henry Ford

129. “People go to LA to “find themselves”, they come to New York to become someone new.” – Lindsey Kelk

130. “There is a time of year in New York when, even before the first leaf falls, you feel the seasons click.”

131. “New York City is the most fatally fascinating thing in America. She sits like a great witch at the gate of the country, showing her alluring white face and hiding her crooked hands and feet under the folds of her wide garments–constantly enticing thousands from far within, and tempting those who come from across the seas to go no farther.

And all these become the victims of her caprice. Some she at once crushes beneath her cruel feet; others she condemns to a fate like that of galley slaves; a few she favors and fondles, riding them high on the bubbles of fortune; then with a sudden breath she blows the bubbles out and laughs mockingly as she watches them fall.” – James Weldon Johnson

Famous Quotes About New York City

132. “Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book–and does.” – Groucho Marx

133. “It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story.” – Agatha Christie

134. “I love New York. You can pop out of the Underworld in Central Park, hail a taxi, head down Fifth Avenue with a giant hellhound loping behind you, and nobody even looks at you funny.” – Rick Riordan

135. “I love New York, even though it isn’t mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it.” – Truman Capote

Movie Quotes & Captions From TV Series About New York City

136. “Here we are Marv. New York City, the land of opportunity.”- Harry, Home Alone 2

137. “When I first moved to New York, I bought Vogue instead of dinner. I just felt it fed me more.” – Carrie Bradshaw, Sex and the City

138. “I love New York City…you’re never alone but you’re always on your own.” – Blair Waldorf, Gossip Girl

139. “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.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

140. “I’m staying! You hear that, New York? THE FROG IS STAYING!” – Kermit the Frog, The Muppets Take Manhattan

141. “And I always heard people in New York never get to know their neighbours.” – Paul Varjak, Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Inspirational Song Lyrics & Poems About New York City

142. “Welcome to New York, it’s been waiting for you.”- Taylor Swift, ‘Welcome to New York’

143. “Times Square can’t shine as bright as you.”- Plain White T’s, ‘Hey There Delilah’

144. “I want to be a part of it, New York, New York.”- Frank Sinatra, ‘New York, New York’

145. “Even if it ain’t all it seems, I got a pocketful of dreams. Baby I’m from New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made of. There’s nothing you can’t do. Now you’re in New York. These streets will make you feel brand new. Big lights will inspire you. Hear it for New York, New York, New York.”- Alicia Keys

146. “I’m in a New York state of mind.”- Billy Joel, ‘New York State of Mind’

147. “Concrete jungle where dreams are made of, there’s nothing you can’t do, now you’re in New York!”- Alicia Keys and JAY-Z, ‘Empire State of Mind’

148. “Look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now! History is happening in Manhattan and we just happen to be in the greatest city in the world!”- Hamilton Cast, ‘The Schuyler Sisters’

Hilarious Funny Puns & Captions About NYC

149. “A trip to NYC can be very taxi-ng on your wallet.”

150. “Finally made it to the Statue of Liberty. It’s a boat time!”

151. “More like Empire Great Building, am I right?”

152. “The views from the Empire State Building couldn’t be any NYCer.

153. “In New York, the vegan puns are so corny.”

154. “The street art in New York is very ad-mural-able.”

155. “After sightseeing all day, I’m Central Park-ing myself down for the rest of the night.”

Short New York City NYC Funny Puns & Captions for Instagram

156. “First Time-rs Square.”

157. “Staten Island floats my boat.

158. “Winter in NYC is snow joke.”

159. “Living the High Line.”

160. “Queens for a day.”

161. “Stop Yankee-ng my chain.”

162. “Spill the Liber-tea.”

163. “I don’t think you’re Dumbo.”

164. “I’m so glad we MET.”

165. “Arch you glad you’re in New York?”

166. “I’d really lake to live by Central Park.”

167. “In winter, NYC is the city of tights.”

Quotes & Captions About Leaving New York City

168. “I left my heart in New York.”

169. “When you leave New York you ain’t going anywhere.” – Jimmy Breslin

170. “Pull up the shades so I can see New York. I don’t want to go home in the dark.” – O. Henry

Final Thoughts on New York City Captions & Quotes For Instagram

We all love travel quotes right, and hopefully you enjoyed these captions about New York! Travel quotes, whether they are inspiring or funny puns, motivate us and feed our wanderlust, and New York is no different!

Do you know another New York quote or caption that is perfect for Instagram? Let me know in the captions below!

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