Sublime

The first thing to understand is that the public peace—the sidewalk and street peace—of cities is not kept primarily by the police, necessary as police are. It is kept primarily by an intricate, almost unconscious, network of voluntary controls and standards among the people themselves, and enforced by the people themselves. In some city areas—olde

I remember how Wendy once told me she loved New York so much she couldn’t bear the thought of it going on without her. It seemed like both the saddest and the most romantic thing one could possibly say—sad because New York can never return the sentiment, and sad because it’s the kind of thing said more often about a romantic love—husband, wife, gir

As I lowered the beam from my headlamp, it struck me that people in SoHo go through a lot more toilet paper than those up in the Bronx.

But what to do, where to, next? To be a New Yorker is one thing, but to decide consciously to stay, to live out one’s life here? That’s another. I wasn’t sure I had what it takes.

While working as a detective in New York, Dashiell Hammett was once assigned to find a Ferris wheel that had been stolen the year before in Sacramento.

“What’s the line? ‘Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean.’ ” “What’s that?” “Raymond Chandler. On how the private detective must be a man of honor. Of course, he had never been one. Dashiell Hammett was one, and he had different ideas.”