People in China say: 'If you love your children, send them to New York. If you hate your children, also send them to New York.'
Do you think you love your children better than He who made them? Is not your love what it is because He put it into your heart first? Have you not often been cross with them? Sometimes unjust to them? Whence came the returning love that rose from unknown depths in your being, and swept away the anger and the injustice? You did not create that love. Probably you were not good enough to send for it by prayer. But it came. God sent it. He makes you love your children.
Many years from now when your children ask what New York City was like just after 9/11, this will be the book you give them in response. It's an exquisite novel full of heart, soul, passion and intelligence, and it's the one this great New York author was born to write.
Sometimes people ask me to do stuff in New York, like "Can you read at this thing?" And I say, "Nooo, I can't just get on a plane with these two screaming children - I can't just get rid of them on such short notice and take vacation and fly over to New York."
Every year when it's Chinese New Year here in New York, there are fireworks going off at all hours. New York mothers calm their frightened children by telling them it's just gunfire.
It's a love-and-hate relationship with New York. Much like Hong Kong, it's expensive, crowded, the weather is not so nice. But New York is home, and I love New York.
I read that book How to Hug a Porcupine [by Julie Ross] - it's my parenting bible. They say you have to trust your children and give them freedom. I say, OK, but this is New York City!
I thought I would hate New York, but I love New York. I almost hate to say that being from Chicago.
Getting on a plane, I told the ticket lady, "Send one of my bags to New York, send one to Los Angeles, and send one to Miami." She said, "We can't do that!" I told her, "You did it last week!"
New York gets under your skin, and I think once you've fallen in love with New York, you take that with you. I love New York.
The absolute base-level thing that you do as a new screenwriter is send out query letters. Literally, you just say, 'Hi, Mr. So-and-So,' and you give them a one-sentence description of one of your scripts. You send it out to a list of people you found on the Internet.
I love filming in New York. I love New York movies, too. I just like it when people can take New York and make it their own, because there are so many different New Yorks.
I'm from New York and I love New York and I'm always repping New York, but what I represent is something deeper than just being a New York rapper.
Books are like your children. They take nine months to write; the manuscript weighs six pounds and...you send them out into the world and hope that some day they'll send back money.
New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it - once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough.
If you can't write like New York, you have no business living in New York and making New York the locale of your stories.