A Quote by Bill Geist
New York is a city of conversations overheard, of people at the next restaurant table (micrometers away) checking your watch, of people reading the stories in your newspaper on the subway train.
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Of course, in Los Angeles, everything is based on driving, even the killings. In New York, most people don't have cars, so if you want to kill a person, you have to take the subway to their house. And sometimes on the way, the train is delayed and you get impatient, so you have to kill someone on the subway. That's why there are so many subway murders; no one has a car.
When you're a kid, you see your parents reading the newspaper and you're like, 'God, why are they reading the newspaper?' When you're young, you're not reading the newspaper. But there comes a time in your life when the newspaper's cool.
When I went to prep school in New York City, I had to ride the subway and learned how to do homework on the train. I can work and read through anything.
Recently it's become much to my surprise, something that does happen. For example, I used to get almost all of my stories, and it's probably still true, from newspapers. Primarily from The New York Times. No one ever really thinks of The New York Times as a tabloid newspaper and it isn't a tabloid newspaper. But there is a tabloid newspaper within The New York Times very, very often.
I mean, being provincial is a privilege in a way. Also people in New York think everybody interacts because they all take the subway. "Oh, I see all these different people! All these different walks of life on the subway." Well, they're not coming to your dinner party. Certainly, in small-town Nebraska, everyone indeed did mix together.
There's nowhere in New York to go and have your emotions to yourself. People just look the other way because every day people see someone crying on the subway!
I've had a relatively charmed life. I loved to be out in the city. New York was my town. I've had people come up to me and say, 'You're a great New Yorker. You've given your time and money to so many New York charities. You're a great supporter of the arts. I like some of your movies - and some of your movies suck, actually.'
New York is a glamorous city, constituted mostly of nobodies. They crave the lights, and if they tell you differently, they're lying. Only dreamers come to New York. As a matter of course, few people have control of their lives. You live at the whim of your boss, your landlord, your grocer, the stranger, the judge, the bus driver, the mayor who won't let you smoke. On the other hand, you live at the whim of your whims, and that is the most exciting thing there is.
Like I always tell people, Buffalo is closer to Toronto than New York City. We an hour and a half away - that's the next major city to us is Toronto. Buffalo's connected to Canada.
The greatest inspiration I draw upon is, is this city (New York) and riding the subway and watching people and I find that's kind of like the best, the best acting teacher. You know, I wonder, like people who have huge celebrity, sometimes I feel bad, should this be one of their methods 'cause I don't know how they can observe life anymore, because they become the observed. So, I, I appreciate that New York can still do that.
I am tired of people using 'diverse' to mean 'of color.' That's not what that word means. 'Diversity' means people of all different races, all together - like a New York City subway.
I feel like one can have all of that as a writer; you're writing, you're reading, you're talking to interesting and intelligent people. Your life is structured around whatever book you're writing, and so is your reading and so are many of your conversations.
At the height of rush hour, people on the London underground actually say "excuse me." Imagine what would happen if you tried an insane stunt like that on the New York City subway. The other passengers would take it as a sign of weakness, and there'd be a fight over who got to keep your ears as a trophy.
When you're on the subway in New York, people literally could be 11-inches away from you, and you can't just stare at them.
There are a lot of New York City Thanksgiving traditions. For example, a lot of New Yorkers don't buy the frozen Thanksgiving turkey. They prefer to buy the bird live and then push it in front of a subway train.
I remember finding this book, which showed a New York subway train that had been covered in so much graffiti you couldn't recognise it was a train. I thought, 'I want to do that... how do you do that?'
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