“Characteristic of the overall difference between Boston and New York, the population at the Acropolis was far less forlorn. Its customers were just those who, for whatever reason, wanted to eat coffee-shop food at very strange hours.”

“Charlie Black: Fourierism was tried in the late nineteenth century… and it failed. Wasn’t Brook Farm Fourierist? It failed. Tom Townsend: That’s debatable. Charlie Black: Whether Brook Farm failed? Tom Townsend: That it ceased to exist, I’ll grant you, but whether or not it failed cannot be definitively said. Charlie Black: Well, for me, ceasing to exist is — is failure. I mean, that’s pretty definitive. Tom Townsend: Well, everyone ceases to exist. Doesn’t mean everyone’s a failure.”

“Even at a young age one sometimes recognizes that there are behavior patterns that would simply be a waste of time for everyone concerned, which leads you to put them out of your mind or avoid them until you reach a certain stage of inebriation, whereupon everything is reconsidered again.”

“The desert doesn't care who you are, and neither does anyone or anything who lives in it.”

“It is often said that New York is a city for only the very rich and the very poor. It is less often said that New York is also, at least for those of us who came there from somewhere else, a city for only the very young.”

“Stencil had called from a Hungarian coffee shop on York Avenue known as Hungarian Coffee Shop”

“In Boston they ask, how much does he know? In New York, how much is he worth? In Philadelphia, who were his parents?”