“Ernest Hemingway was always uneasy in New York and liked being there less than in any other city he frequented.”

Each day was a challenge of enjoyment, and he [Hemingway] would plan it out as a field general plans a campign.

From the time I read my first Hemingway work, The Sun Also Rises, as a student at Soldan High School in St. Louis, I was struck with an affliction common to my generation: Hemingway Awe.

Why is it parents think they help their kids by pretending things are better than they are?

Otherwise, I think the building can be bigger, larger, and the city can be much more crazy. The problem is the government structure is so deadly stupid, not really solving problems but creating a lot of problems itself every day.

I don’t care if this is a great cultural event or a national symbol. It has nothing to do with me. It deals with the city.

In my case, I was stuck there for quite a while. New York is large enough to be a very abstract city, so nobody cares.

You can put city polish on a man, but by golly, it seems you can’t ever rub it off him.

A country-bred man can always learn to get on with city people, but a town-bred fellah never gets the real hang of the country.

No one has imagined us. We want to live like trees, sycamores blazing through the sulfuric air, dappled with scars, still exuberantly budding, our animal passion rooted in the city.

Not houses finely roofed or the stones of walls well builded, nay nor canals and dockyards make the city, but men able to use their opportunity.

Not well-built walls, but brave citizens are the bulwark of the city.