Things and Signs

NYC ferry

"New York has existed for me simultaneously as a map to be learned and a place to aspire to—a city of things and a city of signs, the place I actually am and the place I would like to be even when I am here."
Adam Gopnik, Through the Children's Gate

A Place to Aspire to

Manhattan skyline

"Even when we are established here, New York somehow still seems a place we aspire to. Its life is one thing—streets and hot dogs and brusqueness—and its symbols, the lights across the way, the beckoning skyline, are another. We go on being inspired even when we're most exasperated."
Adam Gopnik, Through the Children's Gate

David and Goliath

Broadway and 125th

"New York is not a Goliath that has become a David; it is a city that combines David and Goliath, and that doubleness is one of the things that draws us to New York. We come here not just or even primarily because we are drawn to power—King of the Hill. Top of the Heap, as they sing at Yankee Stadium—but also because we are intrigued by powerlessness. We come to the city of the overdog in order to have the thrill of feeling like an underdog."

Adam Gopnik, Through the Children's Gate

Wacky Dreams

Midtown

"More than any other city. New York exists at once as a city of symbols and associations, literary and artistic, and as a city of real things. This is an emotional truth, of course—New York is a city of wacky dreams and of disillusioning realities."
Adam Gopnik, Through the Children's Gate

Hope

Madison Square Park fountain

"What New York represents, perfectly and consistently, in literature and life alike, is the idea of Hope. Hope for a new life, for something big to happen, hope for a better life or a bigger apartment."
Adam Gopnik, Through the Children's Gate

Oz

Manhattan skyline

"Even being in New York, the actual place, I found the idea of New York so wonderful that I could only imagine it as some other place, greater than any place that would let me sleep in it -- a distant constellation of lights I had not yet been allowed to visit. I had arrived in Oz only to think, Well, you don't live in Oz, do you?"
Adam Gopnik, Through the Children's Gate

Aspiration and Accomodation

Gramercy Park

"If the energy of New York is the energy of aspiration — let me in there!— the spirit of New York is really the spirit of accommodation — I'll settle for this."
Adam Gopnik, Through the Children's Gate