I lived in Miami for a while in a section with a lot of really old people. The average age in my apartment house was dead.

Living in New York is like being at some terrible late-night party. You're tired you've had a headache since you arrived but you can't leave because then you'd miss the party.

It all fell away then – the control, the independence . . . Everything. She had known it would never be easy to findsolitude . . . To find herself. Not in this city, where appearances were everything; where emptiness filled luxurious landscapes till there was nothing but hollow splendor…She hated the pretense.More than hatred, she was frightened of it.

A car is useless in New York essential everywhere else. The same with good manners.

To hear never-heard sounds, To see never-seen colors and shapes, To try to understand the imperceptible Power pervading the world; To fly and find pure ethereal substances That are not of matter But of that invisible soul pervading reality. To hear another soul and to whisper to another soul; To be a lantern in the darkness Or an umbrella in a stormy day; To feel much more than know. To be the eyes of an eagle, slope of a mountain; To be a wave understanding the influence of the moon; To be a tree and read the memory of the leaves; To be an insignificant pedestrian on the streets Of crazy cities watching, watching, and watching. To be a smile on the face of a woman And shine in her memory As a moment saved without planning.

A soulless city creates soulless people!

In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

In cities it is useless to look at the stars or to describe them, worship them, or seek direction from them. When lost, one should follow the tracks of the camels.

It was a cruel city, but it was a lovely one; a savage city, yet it had such tenderness; a bitter, harsh, and violent catacomb of stone an steel and tunneled rock, slashed savagely with light, and roaring, fighting a constant ceaseless warfare of men and of machinery; and yet it was so sweetly and so delicately pulsed, as full of warmth, of passion, and of love, as it was full of hate.

It is possible to live in San Francisco for $35 000 a year. Obviously that doesn't include food or lodging.