For their holidays: the rich’s kids travel the world; the poor’s kids roam around their grandparents’ yard.

Really, nobody was there?” I asked.“Well, nobody important,” he said, putting his glasses back on and blinking.

An advanced city is not a place where the poor move about in cars, rather it’s where even the rich use public transportation

This time as we ascend, I watch the world sinking below us. I watch the way the city fades into sand that gets washed by the ocean.

The city's all brightnessand shadow, deckle-edged, bluer than air-there's no help anywhere-you no longer know how to listen.

Winter was gray and mean upon the city and every night was a package of cold bleak hours, like the hours in a cell that had no door.

The City is free of sinThe snow has given it absolution A man who slips A horse that fallsOh no, the city is in a nightgown

Eye contact was a delicate matter. A quarter second of a shared glance was a violation of agreements that made the city operational.

A rhinestone skein, a jeweled brocade of light,–the city is a garment stretched so thinher festive colors bleed into the night.

To country people Cows are mild,And flee from any stick they throw;But I’m a timid town bred child,And all the cattle seem to know.

Sometimes you need to sit lonely on the floor in a quiet room in order to hear your own voice and not let it drown in the noise of others.

I roused myself from the book which I was dreaming over rather than reading, and left my chambers to meet the cool night air in the suburbs.

In New York there is always something to look at, but it is all infinitely more interesting through a window in the backseat of a limousine.

I walk the city, through its crush of people and its smells:body odour, rotting food, vomit and urine. A cocktail of oppression and freedom.

I belong here, I tell Toy. I'm hungry for every city block. Every brick building. Every crowded intersection. Electric. I feel brand new.