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The trains were the beating heart of the New York graffiti scene.

Any urbanist has to appreciate New York City and the way it works. The public transit is astonishing.

I didn't start doing graffiti until two years after I got to New York. Jean Michel Basquiat was one of my main inspirations for doing graffiti. For a year I didn't know who Jean Michel was, but I knew his work.

So that's why I said, if you look at the average, you would see the money New York got this year was in line with the average across the prior three years and substantially more, by a country mile, than the money given to any other city.

What was new was the symbolic force of the targets struck. The attackers did not just physically cause the highest buildings in Manhattan to collapse; they also destroyed an icon in the household imagery of the American nation.

I started painting graffiti in the classic New York style of big letters and characters but I was never very good at it.

Hurricane Sandy was one of the most vicious storm systems to hit the New York City area in nearly two centuries.

A great American city is fighting for its life.

The artistic element of Manhattan has kind of moved to Brooklyn. Has it changed it? Yeah. Has it ruined it? I would say no. It is what it is. I say better that than an urban war zone.

The more traumatic events you endure with the city, the more of a New Yorker you become.