Death is the great gamer with a sleeve of tricks.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

Falling in love is the easiest thing in the world. It's standing in love that matters.

All we can do is go around telling the truth.

They are the we of me.

It is a curious emotion, this certain homesickness I have in mind. With Americans, it is a national trait, as native to us as the roller-coaster or the jukebox. It is no simple longing for the home town or country of our birth. The emotion is Janus-faced: we are torn between a nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.

Comparing the Brooklyn that I know with Manhattan is like comparing a comfortable and complacent duenna to her more brilliant and neurotic sister.