“You know what really fries my Puerto rican pancakes?”

“No wonder. Puerto Rican, Italian and Cuban –the perfect ingredients for a hot, bossy, badass cocktail.”

“Queens, New York. The most ethnically diverse region not just in the United States, but on the entire planet... In Queens, you will find Korean kids who sound like black kids. Italians who sound like Puerto Ricans. Puerto Ricans who sound like Italians. Third-generation Irish who sound like old Jews. That's Queens. Not a melting pot, not even a tossed salad, but an all-you-can-eat, mix-and-match buffet.”

“You think we live in Norway or something? Amir Jordan is Pakistani. There's also an Asian guy, some Puerto Ricans, and the starting left wing has, like, carrot-hair. he must be Irish. It's the whole UN over there.”

“What are you doing?" He asks looking intimidating.I shrug, "I want pancakes.""I'll make you pancakes."I laugh and turn around to walk backwards, "I don’t want your pancakes. I want normal pancakes. Not head game pancakes. Not maybe I'll make you happy or maybe I'll scare the shit out of you pancakes. You know?”

“I love Israel, I go back all the time. I just love New York a little more. My workers are Arabs, my best friend is a black man from Alabama, my girlfriend's a Puerto Rican, and my landlord is a half-Jew bastard. You know what I did this morning? I read in the paper yesterday that the circus is setting up in the Madison Square Garden, they said the elephants would be walking through the Holland Tunnel at dawn. I'm a photographer a little too, you know? So I get up at five o'clock, bike over to the tunnel, and wait. It turns out the paper got it wrong, they came through the Lincoln, but still, you know? This is a hell of a place.”