“Outside of New York, the sight of someone reading at a bar is rare enough to excite comment; if you're single and aren't in New York and want to meet other people, I'd recommend it as an icebreaking tactic. Don't attempt this in the city itself, though: Your competition will be heavy, and most of the other readers will likely be more attractive and more successful and richer than you.”

“It's the whole country that makes or breaks a thing like this. New York has very little to do with it. Now if it were a play, it would be different. New York does make or break a play; but it doesn't make or break a book; it doesn't make or break a magazine. The great mass of the readers are outside of New York and the rural districts are what we have got to go for. They don't read much in New York; they write and talk about what they've written. Don't you worry.”

“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.”

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

“The great city of New York wields more of the destinies of this great nation that five times the population of any other portion of the country.”

“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.”