“Once you have lived in New York and made it your home, no place else is good enough”

“New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it - once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough.”

“Intentions, good or bad, are not enough. There's luck or fate or something else that takes over...”

“We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.”

“I have lost all sense of home, having moved about so much. It means to me now--only that place where the books are kept.”

“You're jest one person, an' they's a lot of other folks. You git to your proper place. I knowed people built theirself up with sin till they figgered they was big mean shucks in the sight a the Lord. You ain't big enough or mean enough to worry God much.”

“When we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing.”