A Quote by James Gray
My grandparents used to tell me stories about their trip to Ellis Island from Russia and life on the Lower East Side of New York.
Related Quotes
My grandparents, they came through Ellis Island in 1923, and you know, I'd heard all the stories.
I'm a black lady from the Lower East Side of New York. Not a lot intimidates me.
That's what's interesting about the Lower East Side: It's New York, but it's also edgy. It's not as stuffy as Tribeca or Soho.
I wanted to be an actor ever since I was five. My grandparents - my mom's parents in New York - were stage actors. I think indirectly I wanted to do it because of them. My grandfather would tell me stories about Tennessee Williams and actors he worked with in New York. He had such a respect for acting and such a love for storytelling about that world. I grew up hearing him tell tales of it.They were never encouraging me or discouraging me to take part. They were always feeding me with theater.
I grew up in the Lower East Side of New York.
I'm writing songs about New York. A lot of them carry the names of neighborhoods in Long Island. Maspeth, Montauk. I'm getting into the idea of a F. Scott Fitzgerald-esque Long Island back when New York was...New York.
I always remember to go on the Staten Island Ferry because it's the most amazing view of New York. And it's free! You see Ellis Island, and it conjures up something of that great moment: you know, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. It's staggering.
There used to be a club in new york called Bradley's - I've never been there, it closed in the 80's - but I used to study with Junior Mance, and he would tell me about Bradley's. It was a very important place for a generation of jazz musicians in New York. It was really all about pianists there.
I know very little about my great grandparents, who came through Ellis Island in the early twentieth century, settled in Baltimore, and spoke only Yiddish.
I moved up over Lower East Side and I was adopted by eight foster parents; I lived all over New York City with these parents, man, till I was about ten years old.
I was literally fabricated over in France and born about six months after the boat landed at Ellis Island. This was the heart of the Depression. For the first 12 years of my life we lived in a terrible ghetto on the East River.
I cycled when I was at high school, then reconnected with bikes in New York in the late '70s. It was a good way of getting around the clubs and galleries of the Lower East Side and Soho.
My father had this mythological sense of the old New York, and he used to tell me stories about these old gangs, particularly the Forty Thieves in the Fourth Ward.
My grandfather and his wife came to America at the end of the 19th century from Hungary. Everyone started out on the Lower East Side. They became embourgeoise and would move to the Upper West Side. Then, if they'd make money, they'd move to Park Avenue. Their kids would become artists and move down to the Lower East Side and the Village.
I remember my own life as a small boy, son of Jewish immigrants, in a janitor's flat on Orchard and Stanton streets on the Lower East Side of New York City. My father made pants and doubled as janitor of a tenement - before he made janitoring at $30 a month, plus rooms, a career.
When I was a young comic in New York and I wasn't getting any work, I was wandering around the Lower East Side with my notebook. I would stop at the guitar place on St. Mark's and talk to that dude for a while, then I'd go to the bookstore and talk to that dude for a little while. I had a guy over at the record store, and I'd talk to him for a while. It kept me connected to life.
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