Mythical Dominion

"Terribly funny, yes, but Brooklyn is also sad brutal provincial lonesome human silent sprawling raucous lost passionate subtle bitter immature innocent perverse tender mysterious, a place where Crane and Whitman found poems, a mythical dominion against whose shores the Coney Island sea laps a wintry lament."
Truman Capote, Portraits and Observations

Beach-Head and Banker

"New York is not the United States. It is mainly a beach-head for Europe and a banker for America."
Ernst Bacon, Frontier Figures

Everywhere and Nowhere

"My desire is nothing but a myth — New York, which is everywhere and nowhere."
Simone de Beauvoir, America Day by Day