There was some kind of scuffle two hundred yards down the street, again strangely noiseless, and a huddled knot of men opened up to reveal two brawlers being separated and pulled away from their fight....

Anyway, I think Florence and I noticed each other before the local train screeched to a halt at the 110th Street station, because as I boarded it felt as though we were supposed to step...

Sometimes, from beyond the skycrapers, the cry of a tugboat finds you in your insomnia, and you remember that this desert of iron and cement is an island.

Setting that little girl loose in her society would be like putting a fox in with the chickens. (Violet Strange’s detective boss.)

Some of us claim that New York City is the capital of the country, indeed the capital of the world. Now, that may be a bit much for those who don’t come from New York,...

It was generally agreed that a coffin-size studio on Avenue D was preferable to living in one of the boroughs. Moving from one Brooklyn or Staten Island neighborhood to another was fine, but unless you...

Whether you need to make a call or answer one,don’t put your passions on hold.

Oh, Williamsburg. There was a point when you seemed like a scary, tough neighborhood, but now it’s obvious that the graffiti on your walls gets put there by art students.

True New Yorkers do not really seek information about the outside world. They feel that if anything is not in New York it is not likely to be interesting.

Greenwich Village… the village of low rents and high arts.

My main concern while in New York wasn’t becoming a hot shot. I was more concerned with staying alive, and that took all the pleasure out of the experience. I didn’t know where to find...

There is something in the New York air that makes sleep useless.

It was never built for the comfort and happiness of its citizens, but to astonish the world.

He fell in love with Manhattan’s skyline, like a first-time brothel guest falling for a seasoned professional. He mused over her reflections in the black East River at dusk, dawn, or darkest night, and each...

The circumstances of everyday life were too demanding-and in American’s great cities, appalling.

Everyone in New York City thinks they are famous without being famous.

Like flowers blooming through cement,we, too, can grow beyond our cracks.

If you built the box, you can also break it down.

My one thought is to get out of New York, to experience something genuinely American.

The pulse of New York City can be found on the bent elbows of the patrons in Pete’s Tavern.

It is necessary to find one’s own way in New York. New York City is not hospitable. She is very big and she has no heart. She is not charming. She is not sympathetic. She...

No other place can so convincingly claim to be the capital of capitalism, the capital of the 20th century and the capital of the world.

Silence? What can New York-noisy, roaring, rumbling, tumbling, bustling, story, turbulent New York-have to do with silence? Amid the universal clatter, the incessant din of business, the all swallowing vortex of the great money whirlpool-who...

In New York, the buildings are like mountains in some ways, but they are only alive because of the people living in them. Real mountains are alive all over.

That’s the problem with being born in New York, the old newsman observed a little sadly. You’ve got no New York to run away to.

In the 1970s in New York everyone slept till noon.

You swallow hard when you discover that the old coffee shop is now a chain pharmacy, that the place where you first kissed so-and-so is now a discount electronics retailer, that where you bought this...

Sometimes we have to break down to break through.

From the ruins, lonely and inexplicable as the sphinx, rose the Empire State Building. And just as it had been tradition of mine to climb to the Plaza roof to take leave of the beautiful...

Starshine’s greatest challenge is deciding whether a woman is too young to soothe or too old to shame. Handling the men is much easier. They may feign interest in figures and photos, but their underlying...

It wasn’t so much that I thought there was nowhere to go, in this huge city; but with so many places to go, where were you supposed to begin?

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

Don’t you love New York in the fall? It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.

Central Park is the grandiose symbol of the front yard each child in New York hasn’t got.

Youth is marked by a breathtaking novelty that diminishes with each year of age – until life becomes a delusive struggle to break routines, escape the ordinary, and rediscover the joy of discovery.

If man can live in Manhattan, he can live anywhere.

She can go places we cannot, associate with people we cannot, understand things about society types and women that we never can. (Why Mr. Burke hires Violet Strange.)

To Europe she was America. To America she was the gateway to the earth. But to tell the story of New York would be to write a social history of the world.

I trust you above all others”, he told her. “Above myself”. She shook her head, but then leaned into him, as though taking shelter. He drew her close, the crown of her head beneath his...

You’d be surprised who will back down when you speak up.

New York is a place where the rich walk, the poor drive Cadillac’s, and the beggars die of malnutrition with thousands of dollars hidden in their mattresses.

The streets of New York and some wards of its venerable institutions were packed with people who, despite being entirely forsaken, had episodes of glory that made the career of Alexander the Great seem like...

Oh, I know what to do when I see victuals coming toward me in little old Bagdad-on-the-Subway. I strike the asphalt three times with my forehead and get ready to spiel yarns for my supper.

Look at it,’ he said, gesturing. ‘This window looks down upon hundreds more panes of glass, and behind those panes live thousands upon thousands of lost souls. When I feel cast down and helpless, scores...

Pittsburgh was even more vital, more creative, more hungry for culture than New York. Pittsburgh was the birthplace of my writing.

How did pretty little Anna go from Westchester suburb brat to New York hooker? Now that’s a story.

New York City has finally hired women to pick up the garbage, which makes sense to me, since, as I’ve discovered, a good bit of being a woman consists of picking up garbage.

New York is the place where everyone will stop a championship fight to look at an usher giving a drunk the bum’s rush.

Thank God for immigrants. They’re the only ones who have any personality left. They still allow themselves emotions, judgments, and all those qualities that we are “evolving” past. I don’t know what they’re saying, but...

At chaos’ core lies the invitation.