Town of Contrasts

"A town of contrasts, puritan and libertine; the two-sided picture of a well-policed America and a savage continent, of East and West; a few yards from the luxury of Fifth Avenue and one is in battered and dirty Eighth Avenue. New York is the symbol of America, and half of its population is foreign; it is a center of Anglo-Saxon culture, speaking Yiddish; . . . after making you rich in a week, it ruins you in one morning."
Paul Morand, Mirror for Gotham