“New York is the one place in the world that actively encourages rudeness, because that's the only way to get past the fake bag carriers, homeless people, newspaper thieves, Jesus freaks, and everyone else who wants something and isn't afraid to ask for it, repeatedly, at close range.”

“No, make something different from war. Don't allow your enemies to be enemies. Make them something else, because otherwise they have a power over you that they should not have. If you think in the same ways as the past, you will only get new versions of the past. Think differently. That's what I'm saying.”

“I never had intimate friends, and the few who came close are in New York. By which I mean they're dead, because that's where I suppose condemned souls go in order not to endure the truth of their past lives.”

“I love New York, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it.”

“Imagining isn't perfect. You can't get all the way inside someone else...But imagining being someone else, or the world being something else, is the only way in. It is the machine that kills fascists.”

“You want to go somewhere?' he asked.'Like now? its late.''isn't las vegas the city that never sleeps?''i think that's new york.''right. this is sin city.”