"In New York they are not afraid of any humanness. Even when they are in themselves craven-cowardly, cowardly enough to turn their own stomachs, they still turn their humanness unfearfully face-outward like upturned faces of a pack of cards."
Mary MacLane, I, Mary MacLane
"In New York I am a partaker of that smooth manna of humanness as I am of the air and the sunshine and the little black specks of coal-soot: partly from choice, partly willy-nilly, partly in the sweeping unanalyzable pell-mell-ness of massed human nature."
Mary MacLane, Human Days
"In New York they murder you with a large soft wave of indifferent insolence - no annoyance, no friction. New York eats you as it eats its dinner, rather liking you."
Mary MacLane, A Diary of Human Days
"The feel of New York is a mixture of ice-water, a corrosive acid, and human breath sweeping someway warmish against one's flesh."
Mary MacLane, A Diary of Human Days
"It is immensely ungentle, New York: immensely human: immensely intriguing to all one's selves. It is too big to have prejudices and traditions of locality: so it leaves its dwellers free, by ones and multitudes, to be human beings."
Mary MacLane, I, Mary MacLane
