“New York - The city where the people from Oshkosh look at the people from Dubuque in the next theater seats and say "These New Yorkers don't dress any better than we do.”

“...In the summer New York was the only place in which one could escape from New Yorkers...”

“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.”

“My conception of New York City came from rap music. I envisioned it as a place where people shot each other on the street and got away with it; no one walked on the streets, rather people drove in their sports cars looking for nightclubs and for violence.”

“Every true New Yorker believes with all his heart that when a New Yorker is tired of New York, he is tired of life.”

“They say this is an industrial area, that there are no people here. Aren't we people?" in Noxious New York”