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

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

“As for New York City, it is a place apart. There is not its match in any other country in the world.”

“No place epitomizes the American experience and the American spirit more than New York City.”

“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.”

“These cities grew in approximately the same places as our cities do now, however different the shape of the continents was. There was even a New York that in some way resembled the New York familiar to all of you, but was much newer, or, rather, more awash with new products, new toothbrushes, a New York with its own Manhattan that stretched out dense with skyscrapers gleaming like the nylon bristles of a brand-new toothbrush.”