“And there are loners in rural communities who, at the equinox, are said to don new garments and stroll down to the cities, where great beasts await them, fat and docile.”

“In compulsively keeping myself out of view, I was participating, without realizing it, in a rich New York tradition. Loners and shut-ins and hermits are what keep New York City from imploding. If all the people who never leave their apartments in New York City suddenly left their apartments, the city's infrastructure would crumble.”

“Better and happier those who, recognizing that everything is fictitious, write the novel before someone writes it for them and, like Machiavelli, don courtly garments to write in secret.”

“Great Brown Bear is walking with us, Salmon swimming upstream with us, as we stroll a city street.”

“Some historians, in fact, suggest Hartford recruiters may have pioneered strategies that spurred the great migration of Southern rural blacks to Northern cities.”

“New York is the only city in the world where you can get run down on the sidewalk by a pedestrian.”