Distinctive and the Same

"People are always interested, apparently, in what New York City does. I do not think that is because New York is different from any other place; I think it is because New York is so distinctive of and so like every other place. It is made up not of New Yorkers. It is a joke in New York that you can walk up and down the streets for hours and never meet a person who was born and brought up in New York."
Rosalie Loew Whitney, quoted in Extending the Right of Suffrage to Women