“...for in that city [New York] there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.”

“I was near-delirious. Gazing up at the pillared skyline, I knew that I was surveying a tremendous work of man. Buying myself a drink in the smaller warrens below, in all their ethnic variety (and willingness to keep odd and late hours, and provide plentiful ice cubes, and free matchbooks in contrast to English parsimony in these matters), I felt the same thing in a different way. The balance between the macro and the micro, the heroic scale and the human scale, has never since ceased to fascinate and charm me. Evelyn Waugh was in error when he said that in New York there was a neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistook for energy. There was, rather, a tensile excitement in that air which made one think—made me think for many years—that time spent asleep in New York was somehow time wasted. Whether this thought has lengthened or shortened my life I shall never know, but it has certainly colored it.”

“New York City in life was much like New York City in death. It was still hard to get a cab, for example.”

“LA is the me city, Ruby said, and New York is the you city. In LA it's fuck me. In New York it's fuck you.”

“New York City, city of exaggerations. Place of Herculean ascensions and perilous falls.”

“That's how quickly New York City comes about - like a weather wane - or the head of a cobra. Time tells which.”