1
You swallow hard when you discover that the old coffee shop is now a chain pharmacy, that the place where you first kissed so-and-so is now a discount electronics retailer, that where you bought this very jacket is now rubble behind a blue plywood fence and a future office building. Damage has been done to your city. You say, ''It happened overnight.'' But of course it didn't. Your pizza parlor, his shoeshine stand, her hat store: when they were here, we neglected them. For all you know, the place closed down moments after the last time you walked out the door. (Ten months ago? Six years? Fifteen? You can't remember, can you?) And there have been five stores in that spot before the travel agency. Five different neighborhoods coming and going between then and now, other people's other cities. Or 15, 25, 100 neighborhoods. Thousands of people pass that storefront every day, each one haunting the streets of his or her own New York, not one of them seeing the same thing.Colson Whitehead
2
You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.Colson Whitehead
3
Maybe we become New Yorkers the day we realize that New York will go on without us.Colson Whitehead
4
New York City does not hold our former selves against us. Perhaps we can extend the same courtesy.Colson Whitehead
5
Cherish your old apartments and pause for a moment when you pass them. Pay tribute, for they are the caretakers for your reinventions.Colson Whitehead
6
The city knows you better than any living person because it has seen you when you are alone.Colson Whitehead
7
As if these daily humiliations and sacrifices mean something, are tallied by the ones who keep the books. Tomorrow we pick up where we left off. Sleep tight. Sleep deep. Sleep the sleep of the successful because somehow you made it through the day without anyone finding out that you are a complete fraud.Colson Whitehead
8
Why should anyone else have it easy. Spoken like a true New Yorker.Colson Whitehead