Never Listening

Penn Station

"People in New York never really listened to anyone else; they just waited for a break in the action so they could start to speak, push off with their own boat into the slipstream of talk."

Anna Quindlen, Alternate Side

Better When It Was Worse

Third Avenue

"There was a small, secret part of Nora that was comfortable with trash on the street. It reminded her of her youth, when she'd first arrived in a nastier, scarier, dirtier New York City and moved into a shabby apartment with her best friend, Jenny. A better New York, she sometimes thought to herself now, but never, ever said, one of the many things none of them ever admitted to themselves, at least aloud: that it was better when it was worse."
Anna Quindlen, Alternate Side

Living in New York

Kips Bay Towers

"Wasn't this what living in New York was supposed to be like, the skyline, the anonymity, coexistence without intimacy?"
Anna Quindlen, Alternate Side