A Quote by V. S. Pritchett
A natural New Yorker is a native of the present tense.
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One of the nice things about the United States is that, wherever you go, people speak the same language. So native New Yorkers can move to San Francisco, Houston, or Milwaukee and still understand and be understood by everyone they meet. Right? Well, not exactly. Or, as a native New Yorker might put it, 'Wrong!'
Try to find the real tense of the report you are reading: Was it done, is it being done, or is something to be done? Reports are now written in four tenses: past tense, present tense, future tense, and pretense. Watch for novel uses of CONGRAM (CONtractor GRAMmer), defined by the past imperfect, the present insufficient, and the future absolutely perfect.
I'm a native New Yorker. Everything to do with New York feels like my family.
Hope requires a very careful symbolization. It must not be expressed too fully in the present tense because hope one can touch and handle is not likely to retain its promissory call to a new future. Hope expressed only in the present tense will no doubt be coopted by the managers of this age
I'm a native New Yorker, so I'm edgier; I kind of tell it like it is.
For most visitors to Manhattan, both foreign and domestic, New York is the Shrine of the Good Time. "I don't see how you stand it," they often say to the native New Yorker who has been sitting up past his bedtime for a week in an attempt to tire his guest out. "It's all right for a week or so, but give me the little old home town when it comes to living." And, under his breath, the New Yorker endorses the transfer and wonders himself how he stands it.
I definitely feel like a native New Yorker. My personality was formed there.
I really feel now like a native New Yorker. And I'm very happy here.
I grew up in Chelsea on 22nd Street... I am really a native New Yorker.
A typical native New Yorker, I'm prone to wearing the city's unofficial sartorial color: black.
My family goes way back in New York. So I am a New Yorker; I feel like a New Yorker. It's in my bones.
I begin with songs. They provide a sort of skeleton grammar for me to flesh out. Songs of longing for future tense, songs of regret for past tense, and songs of love for present tense.
Another example of what I have to put up with from him. But there was a time I was mad at all my straight friends when AIDS was at its worst. I particularly hated the New Yorker, where Calvin [Trillin] has published so much of his work. The New Yorker was the worst because they barely ever wrote about AIDS. I used to take out on Calvin my real hatred for the New Yorker.
In New York, all the crews read 'The New Yorker.' In Los Angeles, they don't know from 'The New Yorker.'
It's useful to be born in a different culture because you see things that are not obvious. I come from France. In France, there isn't a pretense of objectivity in publishing. I discovered - and I don't agree with it - that in the US, the New York Times or The New Yorker has to pretend to be objective, and if they present this point of view then they have to also present the other side.
I'm always pointing things out to native New Yorkers that I think are weird about this place and their culture and all that. But I feel like my friends and family from California feel like I've totally "become a New Yorker."
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