“After they see me, when their mothers are feeding them all that cashmere sweater and girdle ----- [expletive deleted by the New York Times], maybe they'll have a second thought - that they can be themselves and win.”

“There would always be an expletive in a New York sentence. Even from a judge. Soderberg was not fond of bad language, but he knew its value at the right time. A man on a tightrope, a hundred and ten stories in the air, can you possibly fucking believe it?”

“A hundred times have I thought New York is a catastrophe, and fifty times : It is a beautiful catastrophe.”

“In 1979 the New York Times reported that in many {New York Subway} stations, the signs are so confusing that one is tempted to wish they were not there at all - a wish that is, in fact, granted in numerous stations and on all too many of the subway cars themselves.”

“I remembered what she'd told me in New York, about building something permanent, and I thought - just maybe - we were off to a good start.”

“When daybreak came we were zooming through New Jersey with the great cloud of Metropolitan New York rising before us in the snowy distance. Dean had a sweater wrapped around his ears to keep warm. He said we were a band of Arabs coming in to blow up New York.”