I am a citizen of this country,” I declare, “and Mr. Mayor, tonight I will be a citizen of this city when I put my shoes under my bed. The courageous men, women and children who are with me (blocked from crossing the bridge into NYC) are also cit...
Thomas Jefferson once said: 'Of course the people don't want war. But the people can be brought to the bidding of their leader. All you have to do is tell them they're being attacked and denounce the pacifists for somehow a lack of patriotism and exp...
I was very much a tough New York street kid. I went to a school where you had to learn how to get along with everybody or fight with everybody, and I did my fair share of both. But you have to learn how to get along. I did an awful lot of fighting. I...
Bernard: Otho, I didn't realize you were into the supernatural. Otho: Well, of course! You remember, after my stint with the Living Theatre. I was one of New York City's leading paranormal researchers, until the bottom dropped out in '72. Beryl: [cyn...
Emilio Barzini: [during a meeting with the Five Families] Times have changed. It's not like the Old Days, when we can do anything we want. A refusal is not the act of a friend. If Don Corleone had all the judges, and the politicians in New York, then...
Bill: Here's the thing. I don't give a tuppenny fuck about your moral conundrum, you meat-headed shit-sack. That's more or less the thing. And I want you to go out there... You, nobody else. None of your little minions. I want you to go out there. An...
Bill: We hold in our hearts the memory of our fallen brothers whose blood stains the very streets we walk today. Also on this night we pay tribute to the leader of our enemies, an honorable man, who crossed over bravely, fighting for what he believed...
Bill: I killed the last honorable man, 15 years ago. Since then it's... You seen his portrait downstairs? Amsterdam Vallon: Mm-hmm. Bill: 'S your mouth all glued-up with cunny juice? I asked you a question! Amsterdam Vallon: [angrily] I said I *seen*...
[speaking of Bill the Butcher] Jenny: When I was twelve years old, my mother was dead, and I was livin' in a doorway. He took me in. Took care of me, in his way. After they cut out the baby... well, he doesn't fancy girls that's scarred up. But you m...
Joe Buck: I like the way I look. Makes me feel good, it does. And women like me, goddammit. Hell, the only one thing I ever been good for is lovin'. Women go crazy for me, that's a really true fact! Ratso, hell! Crazy Annie they had to send her away!...
Sammy Barnathan: I've watched you forever, Caden, but you've never really looked at anyone other than yourself. So watch me. Watch my heart break. Watch me jump. Watch me learn that after death there's nothing. There's no more watching. There's no mo...
Caden Cotard: My father died. They said his body was riddled with cancer and that he didn't know, he went in because his finger hurt. They said he suffered horribly, and that he called out for me before he died. They said that he said he regretted hi...
Joe Turner: I'd like to go back to New York. Joubert: You have not much future there. It will happen this way. You may be walking. Maybe the first sunny day of the spring. And a car will slow beside you, and a door will open, and someone you know, ma...
I’m going to kill myself. I should go to Paris and jump off the Eiffel Tower. I’ll be dead. you know, in fact, if I get the Concorde, I could be dead three hours earlier, which would be perfect. Or wait a minute. It -- with the time change, I cou...
Though Alec had never seen the occupants of the first floor loft, they seemed to be engaged in a tempestuous romance. Once there had been a bunch of someone's belongings strewn all over the landing with a note attached to a jacket lapel addressed to ...
Upon their meeting in New York in 1958: “We didn’t want to live together. We didn’t have any examples of what a good love relationship between two men could be. And there was always the problem of hiding so no one would know we were gay. There ...
They were learning that New York had another life, too — subterranean, like almost everything that was human in the city — a life of writers meeting in restaurants at lunchtime or in coffee houses after business hours to talk of work just started...
Royal Young has accomplished a rare feat in his fresh and riveting debut: he manages to recount his fascinating youth and unconventional family with a mixture of humor, scathing honesty and tenderness. Much more than simply a book about a kid who dre...
I trust you above all others", he told her. "Above myself". She shook her head, but then leaned into him, as though taking shelter. He drew her close, the crown of her head beneath his cheek. Beyond the hansom's window, New York was an endless rhythm...
I never feel so much myself as when I'm in a hot bath. I lay in that tub on the seventeenth floor of this hotel for-women-only, high up over the jazz and push of New York, for near onto an hour, and I felt myself growing pure again. I don't believe i...
Bradlee had been recruited with the idea that the New York Times need nod exercise absolute preeminence in American journalism. That vision had suffered a setback in 1971 when the Times published the Pentagon Papers. Though the Post was the second ne...
