No one thinks Las Vegas is real; it is illusion, but visitors willingly suspend disbelief and pretend.

Capitalism is a warrior culture, a hierarchical mode, and Las Vegas is its epitome.

In a city of illusion, where change is what the city does, it's no wonder Las Vegas is the court of last resort, the last place to start over, to reinvent yourself in the same way that the city does, time after time. For some it works; for some it doesn't, but they keep coming and trying.

Las Vegas is still socially sanctioned deviance. Its brand is just more comfortable to more Americans than it used to be.

No one thinks Las Vegas is real; it is illusion, but visitors willingly suspend disbelief and pretend.

From its founding, [Nevada] has always struggled to belong. It has had a series of masters--the mining industry, the railroads, the federal government, and now gaming and tourism--that have driven the state's economy and compelled its direction.

The reinvention of American culture as purely the self catapulted Las Vegas to prominence. The city took sin and made it choice -- a sometimes ambiguous choice, but choice nonetheless. Combined with a visionary approach to experience that melded Hollywood and Americans' taste for comfort and self-deception, Las Vegas grew into the last American frontier city, as foreign at times as Prague but as quintessential as Peoria. In Las Vegas, you can choose your fantasy; in the rest of America, you don't always get to pick.