City of Immigrants

"New York is a city of immigrants. You become a New Yorker through being in New York, not through having been born in New York."
Hermione Hoby, Five Books

Emotional Palimpsest

"The city is an emotional palimpsest for all its inhabitants. There's that certain street corner, where you had your first kiss with someone, or there's that street crossing where you had an argument. These places become so emotionally freighted for everyone who lives in the city and, of course, that might be the same street corner that you see in, say, Woody Allen’s Manhattan."
Hermione Hoby, Five Books

Grid System

The New York Times building

"People talked about how perfect Manhattan was for walking. The grid system! they said. Its simplicity! But it was the simplicity that stymied her, the rigid right angles that quashed the art of wandering by demanding of you the exactitude, the confidence and conviction, of knowing when to turn right and when to keep going."
Hermione Hoby, Neon in Daylight

Best Sight

South Street Seaport

"All the definite images of New York City she'd accumulated were views from a distance. This was a place best seen from bridges and water and sky."
Hermione Hoby, Neon in Daylight

Sequined Skyline

"Brooklyn was wide open beneath them, Manhattan a visible fairy tale. And tonight the city was going for it, putting on a show like this was its last, the sky outdoing itself in flamingo pinks, all the tiny squares of steel and glass lit into glittering tiles, as if the whole skyline were sequined and shimmying."
Hermione Hoby, Neon in Daylight