In the 1970s in New York, everyone slept till noon. It was a grungy, dangerous, bankrupt city without normal services most of the time. The garbage piled up and stank during long strikes by the sanitation workers. A major blackout led to days and days of looting. The city seemed either frightening or risible to the rest of the nation.

New York has been the subject of thousands of books. Every immigrant group has had its saga as has every epoch and social class.

Nothing lasts in New York. The life that is lived there, however, is as intense as it gets.

Edmund White Quotes