Magic Moments

Central Park (Pixabay)

"New York has magic moments. You stand in Yankee Stadium and look out at Joe DiMaggio's centerfield and Babe Ruth's short rightfield porch, you're by the Rockefeller Center and the light hits you just right, you catch Central Park at just the right moment, when the ducks are swimming and the glaze of the frost is beginning to melt and it'll take your breath away. In New York, you can get those magic moments. You just have to put up with a lot of shit in between. You're living in shit, hour after hour, day after day, and you live for the magic moment. Poof! It's there. Then back to the shit." 
Anonymous former New Yorker, quoted in Neon Metropolis

Broadway and Houston

"We charged headlong through the still-busy intersection of Broadway and Houston Street. Here, it was once sagely remarked, you could fire a shotgun in any direction without hitting an honest man."
Caleb Carr, The Alienist

New York Women

"New York likes its women a bit neurotic. They're encouraged to create a brainy, adorable, conflicted bustle around themselves—à la Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally or Diane Keaton in Annie Hall. Despite having nothing more serious than man troubles, many of my friends in New York were spending more on therapy than on rent."
Pamela Druckerman, French Children Don't Throw Food