“One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.”
“He loves New York, he says. 'It's like Oberlin--it's where people who don't belong anywhere belong.”
“For those who belong nowhere, and for those who belong to one place too much to belong anywhere else.”
“What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous.”
“Five minutes ago it was five minutes late, and my watch is five minutes slow.”
“I love New York, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it.”