Returning to New York

Grand Central Terminal

"Every returning New Yorker asks the question: Is this still my city? I have a ready answer, cloaked in obstinate despair: It is. And if it's not, I will love it all the more. I will love it to the point where it becomes mine again."
Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story

Winners of Winners

Madison Square Garden

"It was summer. She had forgotten that, too, that it was her favorite season, had forgotten the New York stickiness that had first made her love the city and its people, her people, because Manhattan was not just for the winners, but the winners of winners."
Gary Shteyngart, Lake Success

From Unattainable to Commonplace

East 23rd

"New York is famously tough on its newcomers. For most of us -- whether born in Lubbock or Laos -- it is, at first glance, a source of endless intimidation, as indecipherable and unattainable as a well-bred East Coast lover. But time somehow collapses in New York, and within a decade the unattainable becomes commonplace, the love you feel for an impossible mistress turns into something like the love of a middle-aged child for an ailing parent."
Gary Shteyngart, The New York Times