More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
if you are lonely or bone-tired or blue, you need only come down from your perch and step outside. New York—which is to say, New Yorkers—will take care of you.
Life here is a John Cage score, dissonance made eloquent. It’s in the subway where I find the essence of this. Every car on every train on every line holds a surprise, a random sampling of humanity brought together in a confined space for a minute or two—a living Rubik’s Cube. You never know whom you might meet, or who might be sitting next to whom. I prefer standing to sitting and would never doze or read while I ride. To do so would be to miss some astonishing sights—for instance, when two trains depart simultaneously and, like racehorses just out of the gate, run neck and neck for a time.
...more
I didn’t know many people here, which suited me fine. My primary relationship was with the city—like an Mbuti pygmy’s is with the forest.
It requires a certain kind of unconditional love to love living here. But New York repays you in time in memorable encounters, at the very least.
How New York breaks your heart, I thought to myself. This is one way: with violence, with hatred, rage.
“I say I love writing, but really it is thinking I love—that rush of thoughts—new connections in the brain being made. And it comes out of the blue.” O smiled. “In such moments: I feel such love of the world, love of thinking…”
She told me that the coolest thing about life in space was not weightlessness or the incredible speed with which you travel, but the view of Earth from hundreds of miles away. You cannot imagine how beautiful it is. And when you’re in orbit, the sun rises sixteen times a day. That pretty much sums up how I feel about New York.
