“The social success of the Shah in the galaxy of international despots is the end result of a careful campaign, premised on two vital ingredients: snobbery and cash”

East 14th Street should have settled into a cycle of decline and upshift. Instead it was counted on 120-year skid that hasn't bottomed out yet.

The worst insult in the English punks' vocabulary is "poser." These are working-class kids who resent it when the middle classes ape their style.

“Can I possibly believe that this deliberately barbaric sometime poet and her glorified garage band are worthy of comparison with Rimbaud, Jarry, Tzara, Gide, Mondrian? The short version of my answer is yes”

“I think ‘Acid Test’ is a great book, certainly the best to come out of the ’60s… But there is something more: ‘Acid Test’ is about the whole sticky problem of optimism.”

“It never used to be this way,” Jimmy said, shaking his head. “It just used to be regular bums. You had a bottle under your coat and you slept in hallways. Now you got the young guys and the pills. They go crazy, and they make everybody else crazy.”

“Traveling on the New York subway system is now one of the more frightful experiences Western civilization has to offer on a regular basis. The experience is not only intolerable. It is also a daily advertisement for the brutish sensibilities and shallow brainpans of the people who now control the city.”

“The blackout starkly exposed the apparent nonchalance of Con Ed itself in devising a truly crisis-proof system.”

“It’s an ugly thing to see all this looting, for sure. But the people who live in Bed-Stuy and Bushwick have had their lives looted for years.”

“I am, or have been, a certified Grateful Dead freak; I don’t know how many Dead concerts I’ve attended, but it has to be more than 25, which for this record addict is a record. What’s more, I never made a conscious decision to lay off.”