"Where politer European cities might have had street mimes, New York has always had the Brechtian street theater of pavement psychodrama: the muttering, bellowing, gesticulating and teetering looney tunes for whom the drugs are no longer working, who look like characters from Exodus, prophets of urban collapse and carnal comeuppance."
A.A. Gill, The Golden Door
"There's no arguing with this. New York is the mark against which all cities measure themselves. Because New Yorkers say so."
A.A. Gill, The Golden Door
"Undeniably the globe's other place, its virtual second home, is New York. It's not just because Manhattan looks so memorable, or that it was the gateway for so much immigration. It is the first city of the electric age. We know it because it's been in our living room, kitchen and bedroom all our lives. New York is the greatest, most enduring, leading-man, heart-throb location of the screen. New York is the stage of our collective dramas."
A.A. Gill, The Golden Door
"The one thing you probably won't be expecting in New York is the climate. No one in their right mind would build a city here. Well, only the Dutch, and they built a whole country below sea level. New York bakes in a cess of gritty fug all summer, and congeals into grey slush all winter. There are a couple of days in the spring and autumn when the sky is madonna blue, the air crisp, and the light bright and sparkling, and that's when they take the pictures and make the romantic comedies."
A.A. Gill, The Golden Door
