Creative Scene Quotes

I think Amsterdam is to Holland what New York is to America in a sense. It's a metropolis, so it's representative of Holland, but only a part of it - you know, it's more extreme, there's more happening, it's more liberal and more daring than the countryside in Holland is.

Portland is a place where you can find a community as a feminist, a vegan or a fat activist. Artists, musicians, knitters, and filmmakers can all meet like-minded souls. It's proved the perfect place for me and all my punk friends.

For people who know both New York and the Bay Area, it is a complement to say that Oakland is San Francisco's Brooklyn. It's a complement both to Oakland and to Brooklyn. And, if you look at Brooklyn, Brooklyn is hot; Brooklyn is cool.

A real New Yorker is always someone who came here from somewhere else to avoid some kind of persecution, often sexual-preference based, or to be discovered in one of the infinite-though-no-longer-thriving alternative scenes, i.e. theater, music, dance, vaudeville, art, drag, or, in those of the greatest egos, to be 'the next Andy Warhol.'

When I first started coming to New York in the early Nineties and seeing the vitality of the programme compared to what was going on back in London or Paris, it was just in a different league. It's like a 16th-century court.

It was really inspiring to be in West London in the late 1980s and early 1990s, especially in Mark Lebon's Crunch Studios, where I met people like Ray Petri, Neneh Cherry, Judy Blame, Nick and Barry Kamen, Zoe Bedeaux, and Venetia Scott.

If you want me to perform in Silver Lake - where it looks like 'Vice' magazine threw up everywhere, where all the men are wearing V-necks to their belly buttons, salmon pants, and carrying a screenplay - I'll do it, because they might appreciate a Banksy joke I can't do anywhere else.

Nashville has a great creative atmosphere. It's a small, close-knit music community that you can't find anywhere else.

In the middle 1940s... I heard everyone live. Painting, the theater; everything was happening. It was an exciting time when New York was the place to be.

In bohemian circles, we were very aware that poetry was missing from popular culture.

I really love New York, and I've lived here for a long time. I know not just the different neighborhoods but the different kind of class cultures in New York from the up-and-coming, down-and-out kind of artist to the powerful worlds of finance.

I used to live in New York, and I have friends that work in the fashion world, and I feel like I had an ear to the ground there.

I love Notting Hill and Westbourne Grove - there is so much life and vitality around Portobello and Ladbroke Grove. It has come up a lot since I started Virgin more than 40 years ago, but there is so much character.

Manhattan is like Beverly Hills. And the soul of New York has moved to Brooklyn, where everything new and exciting seems to be.

In Portland, there are so many trained artists and technicians, there's an enormous talent base. And it's not like second-stringers.

When I started at Pratt, Spike Lee had his 40 Acres and A Mule studios down the street. You'd see Rosie Perez walking around going to Mike's Coffee Shop. So it was this black bohemian.

The country's top chefs, designers, media personalities and businesses are part of this dynamic city. We know that Chicagoans are used to the highest standards.

One of the reasons I stay in New York is because you're always around so many other types of arts, and it's easy to just get lost in it.

London is full of creative people - you can never say that it's not.

London was an exciting place to work at one point because, socially, it was very progressive - a catalyst. There were very interesting artists making all types of work, but it got to a point where the social aspect became claustrophobic.

New Yorkers think they have everything, all the best art and music. But really L.A. is a better place.

There isn't really a theatre culture in L.A., which is odd when there are so many brilliant actors there.

Manhattan was the capital of the twentieth century for black writers, artists, and intellectuals as much as it was for their white counterparts.

I like being from a city that is not entrenched in show business. When you're in New York City or Los Angeles, even if you're not dealing with show business, there's still this sense that it's the center of the universe.

'The Good Guy' is a totally differently-looking New York than 'How To Make It' portrays. 'The Good Guy' is all about Wall Street and that culture, which 'How To Make It' touches on, but 'How To Make It' also is downtown, Lower East Side loft parties, cool clubs, Brooklyn and that world.