“I like Christmas music. I like the schlock and I like the religion. I like sen­timental innocence and I like trancing out on the same standards sung and resung. So here, with what I sincerely hope is the right mix of Christian charity and obsessed consumerism, is a guide to some of the season's better music”

“Incidents of violence against black people in the United States have reached epidemic proportions. When the police department — which is supposed to stop these crimes — is in fact implicated in them, genocide as official policy against black Americans cannot be far behind”

“These transcontinental urban griots echo the de­spair, pain, and anger of the South Bronx and Harlem (the world's two major rap centers), which a lot of the cool-jerk white liberals and b.s. black bourgeoisie don't want to hear.”

“For both black and white, there is a pride in the fact that Atlanta has long been an oasis of relative political enlightenment sur­rounded by the redneck mandates of the rest of the state”

“Every age gets the journalism it de­mands and the journalism it deserves. Right now, ankle-deep in the Reagan era, the situation looks pretty grim.”

“The 34-year-old millionaire developer weaned on Brooklyn Democrat­ic politics was once again going after a spectacular tax break”

“City-assisted projects like Trump's million-dollar-a-condo-casbah for oil sheiks escape even the minimal minority-hiring requirements of the city”

“As far as I'm concerned, there are only two valid reasons to venture down­town. One of them is the second-hand bookstores, undeniably the best in the city. The other is the obligatory trek down to The Village Voice to hand in one's copy under the duress of a deadline”

“One of my supreme ambitions is to live to be 120 years old and be able to say I never set foot inside Bloomingdale's”

“Like other forms of ghetto street culture — graffiti, verbal dueling, rapping­ — breaking is a public arena for the flam­boyant triumph of virility, wit, and skill. In short, of style.”