Greenwich Village Quotes

“What are you going to do?

"Can't say - run for president, write -"

"Greenwich Village?"

"Good heavens, no - I said write - not drink.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

“The late 1920s were an age of islands, real and metaphorical. They were an age when Americans by thousands and tens of thousands were scheming to take the next boat for the South Seas or the West Indies, or better still for Paris, from which they could scatter to Majorca, Corsica, Capri or the isles of Greece. Paris itself was a modern city that seemed islanded in the past, and there were island countries, like Mexico, where Americans could feel that they had escaped from everything that oppressed them in a business civilization. Or without leaving home they could build themselves private islands of art or philosophy; or else - and this was a frequent solution - they could create social islands in the shadow of the skyscrapers, groups of close friends among whom they could live as unconstrainedly as in a Polynesian valley, live without moral scruples or modern conveniences, live in the pure moment, live gaily on gin and love and two lamb chops broiled over a coal fire in the grate. That was part of the Greenwich Village idea, and soon it was being copied in Boston, San Francisco, everywhere.”
― Malcolm Cowley, Exile's Return: A Literary Odyssey of the 1920s

“He opened his laptop and showed me a picture of a “cozy” Greenwich Village apartment he’d found online. My dad, a born New Yorker, had told me stories of the Village, a lively network of cobblestone streets and jazz dives, coffee houses and folk clubs with no cover fee—and I felt a surge of light-headed ambition. “Though it’s kind of strange,” Justin continued, “there is no bathroom inside. Our toilet would be down a public hallway.”
― Aspen Matis, Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir

“Crowley started painting in 1919 while in Greenwich Village, New York, Alesiter had extravagant tastes. By the time, he was a thirty-year-old, he had spent his inheritance. Nevertheless, he purchased the best quality oil paints that money could buy, for his new project, just as he always purchased the most expensive paper on which to write his written works. Crowley's image of Lam appeared as part of the Dead Souls art exhibition show of Crowley's art work in Greenwich Village, New York in 1919".”
― Laurence Galian, 666: Connection with Crowley