When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I think New York is a good place to write in general because it's a grid. It's organized. You know where you are on the map. That centers you, and your imagination is perhaps freer to roam.
I grew up in the Lower East Side of New York.
I moved to New York to work in theater, so my range of motion was really from where I lived - which was downtown, in the Lower East Side - to Midtown, where the theaters are. So I got to know New York, Midtown and south.
I now know my right from my left and my up from my down. Unluckily, my terrible sense of direction remains. For me, to live in New York City is to never be able to meet someone on the northeast corner. It is to never ever make a smooth entrance, always to get caught looking lost on the street.
I have been influenced in my thinking by both west and east.
This is my favorite area in New York - the West Village is the heart of New York. I could never move somewhere else.
I grew up in Manhattan on the Upper East Side.
New York is really the place to be; to go to New York, you're going to the center of the world, the lion's den.
New York is my, you know, second hometown.
More than any other place, New York is where I felt I belonged. I prefer the Lower East Side to any place on the planet. I can be who I am there, and I couldn't do that anywhere I lived as a child. I never fit in when I lived in California, even though that's where my roots are.