Sophistication" is another word for that inventive mix of tolerance, resilience, and resourcefulness city people develop.

The novelist screws up his courage in order to invest another two or three years in another attempt to float a boat of original design upon an invented ocean.

Silence is exhilarating at first - as noise is - but there is a sweetness to silence outlasting exhilaration, akin to the sweetness of listening and the velvet of sleep.

Many people have believed that they were Chosen, but none more baldly than the Texans.

We New Yorkers see more death and violence than most soldiers do, grow a thick chitin on our backs, grimace like a rat and learn to do a disappearing act. Long ago we outgrew the need to be blowhards about our masculinity; we leave that to the Alaskans and Texans, who have more time for it.

Animals used to provide a lowlife way to kill and get away with it, as they do still, but, more intriguingly, for some people they are an aperture through which wounds drain. The scapegoat of olden times, driven off for the bystanders sins, has become a tender thing, a running injury. There, running away is me: hurt it and you are hurting me.

There aren't many irritations to match the condescension which a woman metes out to a man who she believes has loved her vainly for the past umpteen years.