To write a story about New York that only deals with people in your age and socioeconomic bracket, that feels dishonest to me. So much of New York comes from everyone bumping into each other.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I'm a New York story.
I seem to only write New York stories because it's the only thing that inspires or interests me.
I have tremendous affection for New York and my life, but I'm a satirist at heart. And it's easy to satirize New York.
Most of the people in New York are very often from somewhere else.
I miss the anonymity that comes with New York because everyone around you is so immersed in their own journey.
I think that even though some of the things on 'Humans of New York' are kind of very personal and very revealing, I think the discomfort with sharing that tends to be overwritten by the appreciation of being able to distill the experience of your life into a story and share it with other people.
What's so fascinating about New Yorkers is that each person has a whole lexicon of personal logic in the way that they decipher and do what has to be done to enjoy, stay alive, take pleasure in this place.
At one point, I had a story accepted at the 'New Yorker,' which sent off weird bells in people when I told them - 'Oh,' they thought, 'now you are a writer' - where I really had been for the last 30-odd years.
The thing that always attracted me to New York was the sense of being in a place where a lot of people had a lot of stories not unlike mine. Everybody comes from somewhere else. Everyone's got a Polish grandmother, some kind of metamorphosis in their family circumstances. That's a very big thing - the experience of not living where you started.
I think the mix of narrative and analysis that the 'New Yorker' requires is a perfect expression of what my parents each gave me.