New York is a Trap

"New York is vast, hideous, and strewn with the wrecks of lost and fidgeting souls. It's a trap, venomous, and woe to the person who stays here too long."
William Styron, Selected Letters of William Styron

Persecuted Minority

Dumbo

"As a group, Brooklynites form a persecuted minority; the uninventive persistence of not very urbane clowns has made any mention of their homeland a signal for compulsory guffaws; their dialect, appearance and manners have become, by way of such side-splitting propaganda, synonymous with the crudest, most vulgar aspects of contemporary life."
Truman Capote, Portraits and Observations

Twin Towers

Tribute in Light (Wikimedia Commons)

"Although the two towers have disappeared, they have not been annihilated. Even in their pulverized state, they have left behind an intense awareness of their presence. No one who knew them can cease imagining them and the imprint they made on the skyline from all points of the city. Their end in material space has borne them off into a definitive imaginary space. By the grace of terrorism, the World Trade  Center has become the world's most beautiful building — the eighth wonder of the world!"
Jean Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism and Other Essays