- Anthony Bourdain: I stay at many different types of hotels. And I'm reasonably happy at a lot of them. But, we're talking about love. Like someone you fall in love with, its the eccentricities that you embrace as much as anything else - if not more. so
- Anjelica Huston: Oh, I wouldn't.
- [laughs]
- Anjelica Huston: I wouldn't for a moment - the place that prides itself for discretion. I'm not gonna blow that.
- Naomi Campbell: Feeling-wise, feeling of vibration, you feel like the history of Jackie O., you know, Presidents and princesses, and people like that.
- George Clooney: This room probably, in particular, its probably had some very elegant evenings and its probably had some pretty dastardly things go on in here. Dastardly! Dastardly stuff.
- Condoleezza Rice: You get what you pay for. And, I'm not one - I'm a fairly frugal person. I don't believe in paying for what I'm *not* getting.
- Lenny Kravitz: This would be a place where I would bring a date, like, let me see if this - if this girl can hang. You know, if she can understand this and enjoy it and if I brought a girl here and she liked it, I saying, its very major for me; because, yes, its a very exclusive club, its a very distinct thing.
- Mika Brzezinski: [getting her hair cut at Yves Durif at The Carlyle] You walk in the door and you just go back in time. And its beautiful. And its elegant. And its slow. And its deliberate. And yet Mick Jagger will come out of the elevator at the drop of the hat. So...
- Anjelica Huston: The Carlyle is groovy simply because it doesn't screen hipness. That's why it is hip.
- Anthony Bourdain: You're holding your breathe. How much longer can - can this exist? Its completely awesome and, frankly, nuts.
- Piers Morgan: The most famous elevator ride in history took place in The Carlyle. Because, one of the guys that operates the elevator said to me, "You know, we once had Princess Diana and Micheal Jackson and Steve Jobs, all at the same time." Now, that is a power elevator... and it was pretty silent, until, Diana begins singing, "Beat It."
- [laughs]
- Wes Anderson: Every hotel has changed radically; except for a handful of them. My favorite thing, really, to do is to feel like you're stepping back in time and, you know, this one, they give you that.
- Graydon Carter: I remember going to visit Hunter Thompson when he was doing a piece for us. And I went up to his room, perhaps is was 11:30, he was having breakfast, and he had a bottle of scotch, a bowl of cereal, and bowl of cocaine. And he asked me what I wanted for breakfast and I said, "I'm fine. I've already had breakfast."
- Sofia Coppola: That's what I like about The Carlyle - because its this world with a certain kind of formality; but, its very comfortable and its not a world I grew up in, so, it has an exotic feeling.
- Anthony Bourdain: Bemelmans Bar is really unique and I don't know of any similarly decorated bars, with the kind of personal history, that this place has. It is the last place where you can see a public installation of the works of Ludwig Bamelmans. There's no where else! This is it. Above and beyond the fact that you can see "Madeline" on the wall and how beloved Bemelmans characters from those books are, there is much, much more to Bemelmans - much more - than the "Madeline" books.
- Elaine Stritch: The way they make you feel when you check into The Carlyle Hotel on Madison Avenue in New York City - the way they make you feel - it's magical.
- Wes Anderson: In fact, I made film that is set in a hotel and - one of the biggest inspirations is Ludwig Bemelmans.
- Paul Shaffer: [on Bobby Short] He was the hippest of the hip. The most continental of continental entertainers and jet setters.
- Lenny Kravitz: I've been coming to The Carlyle since I was about three - four years old. I grew up blocks away from here. I grew up at 5 East 82nd Street and my parents were very close with Bobby Short. I was brought to this room as a small child, made to put on a suit, which I didn't like, which I remember it was very itchy. And I used to sit in this room and listen to Bobby Short.
- Bobby Short: [archival footage singing] Someday, When I'm awfully old, And the world is cold, I will feel a glow, Just thinking of you, And the way you look tonight...
- Lenny Kravitz: As a kid, you know, by the time I was like five - seven - eight, I didn't really get it. And, you know, you're in a room full of adults, it's quiet, it's dark, and, you know, Bobby's playing Duke Ellington, Rodgers and Hart, and Gershwin and so forth; but, one day, I got it. I understood it. And, I fell in love with Bobby and this room.
- Alan Cumming: I want to tell you one thing - like, a big confession. On, please, and one must make a vow of secrecy to this. On Tuesday night, I went outside this hotel, out the main doors, with two dancers and a magnum of champagne, naked, and we took a picture. And we just went downstairs and we did it! And nobody knew. Nobody caught us.
- Jill Kargman: I am a Woody Allen fanatic. I love all of his movies and I had seen Cafe Carlyle in "Hannah and her Sisters". And when Dianne Wiest is like snorting a third nostril into her face, I just thought it was the most amazing juxtaposition; because, you have the piano piece going and, then, she's just coked out of her mind and Woody Allen's suicidal and its just fabulous. And I thought to myself, "Self, I've got to go there."
- Paul Shaffer: [on Bobby Short] An 80th birthday party was held for him and I remember Bobby, clear as day, saying, "It's glamorous." And I said, "That is the way to live!" You know, there's the way to live. Turning 80, yes, it's glamourous.
- Anthony Bourdain: I don't know whether profit comes first here. There is an eccentricity, there is an identity, there is a tradition here, that must be served. And I think they're aware of that. They're not screwing things up by changing them. It is a weird, what I think is dysfunctional, what I mean by dysfunctional, is that it could be a lot more cold blooded. They could probably be taking in a lot more money if they were appealing for a wider, more middle ground. A certain type of people like this place.
- Jill Kargman: This is a glamorous place. I mean, I have a real estate boner just sitting here. I mean, there's probably been some lucky hookers in here.
- Fran Lebowitz: Everything in New York you could do on the spur of the moment. Like, maybe, let's go see Bobby at the Cafe Carlyle. Just the way you used to be able to say, "You know, I have a half hour. I'm going to the Museum of Modern Art." You can't do that now. You know, there's lines. There's a zillion people. So, all of the treasures of New York, that were the reason you lived in New York and put up with all the things that are not great about New York; now, you know, there's a billion people from Kansas ahead of you in line. And, even if you can make a phone call and get ahead of that line, you're gonna be in there with a billion people from Kansas.
- Kelli O'Hara: I grew up in Oklahoma. I wasn't singing on big stages, I was singing in people's living rooms. So, I knew that being at the Cafe Carlyle was going to feel like this small, intimate space were you can reach out and touch the people and they hear it in a different way. And, then, so, I chose to sing a song called, "Make Someone Happy" which everyone knows but I don't think people listen to it enough. The lyric is, "Fame, if you win it, Comes and goes in minute, Where's the real stuff in life to cling to, Love is the answer, Someone to love is the answer, And make them happy, And then you'll be happy too." So, I would finish my set with that song and that story. And the reason for that, is that intimate thing. The audience there, I think, really loves that kind of thing. Because, we go back to a time when things were simpler, and things were more - real, maybe, a little bit. More face-to-face. More human. And I'll always go and have me some of that if you're offering.
- [laughs]
- Kelli O'Hara: Absolutely.