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

New York Types

East 25th

"There were three types of people in New York: people like Nora, who had found their home there; people who talked about how much they hated it and would always live and eventually die there; and people who always had one foot over the border, to Scarsdale or Roslyn or Boca Raton."
Anna Quindlen, Alternate Side

Different Perspectives

West 39th

"The thing about New York is that while you are in it, of it, it seems unequivocally the center of the universe. Your metabolism rises to meet it, so that your heart seems to beat faster, your mind to jump more quickly from one thing to another. The earth seems made of concrete all the way down to its core. But far enough away, it seems not only improbable but impossible."
Anna Quindlen, Rise and Shine

Biggest Little Small Town

West Village

"New York is the biggest little small town in America. That's why it's so dangerous. Believe me: having your purse snatched is nothing compared to being mugged by Manhattan manners over rare tuna on toast rounds."
Anna Quindlen, Rise and Shine

Latin Mass

"New York is so often publicly associated with creativity and innovation that outsiders actually come to believe it. The truth is that behavior here is as codified as the Latin Mass."
Anna Quindlen, Rise and Shine