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

“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.”

“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.”

“In other parts of the country people tried to stay together for the sake of the children. In New York they tried to work things out for the sake of the apartment.”

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

“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.”