“
Well, at least you know it works this time," she said, getting on behind him. "If we crash into the parking lot of a Key Food, I'll kill you, you know that?"
"Don't be ridiculous," said Jace. "There are no parking lots on the Upper East Side. Why drive when you can get your groceries delivered?
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
“
I imagined loading the God of the Sea into a taxi and taking him to the Upper East Side.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1))
“
THAT’S HOW MY STORY ENDS. With the loss of everyone I have ever loved. With me, in a big, beautiful Upper East Side apartment, missing everyone who ever meant anything to me. When you write the ending, Monique, make sure it’s clear that I don’t love this apartment, that I don’t care about all my money, that I couldn’t give a rat’s ass if people think I’m a legend, that the adoration of millions of people never warmed my bed. When you write the ending, Monique, tell everyone that it is the people I miss. Tell everyone that I got it wrong. That I chose the wrong things most of the time. When you write the ending, Monique, make sure the reader understands that all I was ever really looking for was family. Make sure it’s clear that I found it. Make sure they know that I am heartbroken without it. Spell it out if you have to. Say that Evelyn Hugo doesn’t care if everyone forgets her name. Evelyn Hugo doesn’t care if everyone forgets she was ever alive. Better yet, remind them that Evelyn Hugo never existed. She was a person I made up for them. So that they would love me. Tell them that I was confused, for a very long time, about what love was. Tell them that I understand it now, and I don’t need their love anymore. Say to them, “Evelyn Hugo just wants to go home. It’s time for her to go to her daughter, and her lover, and her best friend, and her mother.” Tell them Evelyn Hugo says good-bye.
”
”
Taylor Jenkins Reid (The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo)
“
I pictured my mom, alone in our little apartment on the Upper East Side. I tried to remember the smell of her blue waffles in the kitchen. It seemed so far away.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1))
“
What I did with his automobile was fairly dramatic and somewhat risky, but still a lot easier than finding a parking place on the Upper East Side.
”
”
Mark Helprin (Memoir from Antproof Case)
“
They were all on Klonopin, was my guess. They lived mostly in Brooklyn, another reason I was glad to live on the Upper East Side. Nobody up there listened to the Moldy Peaches. Nobody up there gave a shit about “irony” or Dogme 95 or Klaus Kinski.
”
”
Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation)
“
I've lived in this city all my life. I grew up on the Upper East Side. And when I was ten years old, I was rich, I was an aristocrat. Riding around in taxis, surrounded by comfort, and all I thought about was art and music. Now, I'm 36, and all I think about is money.
”
”
Wallace Shawn (My Dinner With André)
“
Nothing stayed—or so I had always thought. Nothing stayed and nothing lingered.
But I was wrong.
Because there was an apartment in the Monroe on the Upper East Side that was full of magic, and it taught me how to say goodbye.
And it was no longer mine.
That didn't matter though, because I carried all of the good moments with me, the walls and the furniture—the claw-foot tub and the robin's-egg blue chair—and the way my aunt danced me around the living room, so no matter where I was, I would always be home.
Because the things that mattered most never really left.
The love stays.
The love always stays, and so do we.
”
”
Ashley Poston (The Seven Year Slip)
“
We were fairly protected from it on the Upper East Side, but I was still uncomfortable with the idea that Connor was growing up so close to so much chaos.
”
”
Taylor Jenkins Reid (The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo)
“
The restaurant in the Upper East Side was within walking distance, though Gene and Rosie seemed to struggle for the final twenty blocks. Both needed to work on their fitness.
”
”
Graeme Simsion (The Rosie Effect (Don Tillman, #2))
“
this crowd made Upper East Side girls look like Mennonites.
”
”
Kevin Kwan (Crazy Rich Asians (Crazy Rich Asians, #1))
“
Armand keeps the island of Manhattan safe for them—Louis, Armand, and two young blood drinkers, Benjamin and Sybelle, and whoever else joins them in their palatial digs on the Upper East Side.
”
”
Anne Rice (Prince Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles #11))
“
This was Yorkville, the Upper East Side. People were uptight. When I shuffled through the lobby in my pajamas and slippers on my way to the bodega, I felt like I was committing a crime, but I didn’t care.
”
”
Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation)
“
Mom used to say New York was a great place to have no money. There’s so much free art and beauty, so much incredible, cheap food. But having money in New York, I remember her saying one winter as we window-shopped on the Upper East Side, Libby and I hanging on to her gloved hands, now that would be magical.
”
”
Emily Henry (Book Lovers)
“
We played this game from the west village to the upper east side til around midnight when the Chrysler building was far behind us and we weren’t sure if we were in love anymore.
”
”
Darnell Lamont Walker
“
That's how my story ends. With the loss of everyone I have ever loved. With me, in a big, beautiful Upper East Side apartment, missing everyone who ever meant anything to me
”
”
Taylor Jenkins Reid (The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo)
“
That's how my story ends. With the loss of everyone I have ever loved. With me, in a big beautiful Upper East Side apartment, missing everyone who ever meant anything to me.
”
”
Taylor Jenkins Reid (The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo)
“
Me daba la impresión de que todos tomaban clonazepam. Vivían casi todos en Brooklyn, otra de las razones por las que me alegraba de vivir en el Upper East Side.
”
”
Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation)
“
Christoph knew that East Eighty-Ninth Street was on the Upper East Side, but had no idea what life was like there. He had come to New York to make something of his life, and to sing.
”
”
Richard Aronowitz (An American Decade)
“
On any given day, half of the subway cars smelled like urine, and attempting to get anywhere on time was nearly impossible. It was stressful to live in the city and I still hadn’t found my niche, but I had dreams. One day when I’d paid off my massive pile of student loans and was working for Vogue, I’d move to the Upper East Side and get to experience the city in a whole new light.
”
”
R.S. Grey (The Allure of Julian Lefray (The Allure, #1))
“
Some time later there was a song on all the jukeboxes on the Upper East Side that went "but where is the school-girl who used to be me," and if it was late enough at night I used to wonder that.
”
”
Joan Didion
“
All good things must end,’ said Frances Price. She was a moneyed, striking woman of sixty-five years, easing her hands into black calfskin gloves on the steps of a brownstone in New York City’s Upper East Side.
”
”
Patrick deWitt (French Exit)
“
Walking through the West Village one night, he had a eureka moment: He would make a gay bar, but for straight people. It was a brilliant idea. Soon after, he opened the first T.G.I. Friday's on the Upper East Side.
”
”
Moira Weigel (Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating)
“
It is a curious societal comment that the major agencies in New York serving the blind were on the genteel upper East Side or on tree-lined streets in Chelsea. The Society for the Deaf was in a place the police had forsaken.
”
”
Lou Ann Walker (A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family)
“
There was a Dana Phelps with a son named Brandon, but they didn’t live on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The Phelpses resided in a rather tony section of Greenwich, Connecticut. Brandon’s father had been a big-time hedge fund manager. Beaucoup bucks. He died when he was forty-one. The obituary gave no cause of death. Kat looked for a charity—people often requested donations made to a heart disease or cancer or whatever cause—but there was nothing listed.
”
”
Harlan Coben (Missing You)
“
He’d forgotten something essential about life, which was to make sure his children understood his values. No matter how many times you whispered your values to them, the thing that spoke louder was what you chose to do with your time and resources. You could hate the Upper East Side. You could hate the five-million-dollar apartment. You could hate the private school, which cost nearly $40,000 per kid per year in elementary school, but the kids would never know it because you consented to it. You opted in.
”
”
Taffy Brodesser-Akner (Fleishman Is in Trouble)
“
This is the kind of education that Donald Trump never bothered to get before becoming president. Although he lived and worked for decades only a few blocks from the Council’s headquarters in an elegant Upper East Side townhouse, he never showed any interest in its work or in US foreign policy more broadly. Even as president he has never once visited a war zone. He loves military symbols—hence his desire for a military parade in Washington—but shows no understanding of how the armed forces actually operate.
”
”
Max Boot (The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right)
“
Some time later there was a song on all the jukeboxes on the Upper East Side that went "but where is the schoolgirl who used to be me," and if it was late enough at night I used to wonder that. I know now that almost everyone wonders something like that, sooner or later and no matter what he or she is doing, but one of the mixed blessings of being twenty and twenty-one and even twenty-three is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened to anyone before.
”
”
Joan Didion (Slouching Towards Bethlehem)
“
As filthy as any night was, a New York City morning is always clean. The eyes get washed.
Flowers in white deli buckets are replenished. The population bathes, in marble mausoleums of Upper East Side showers, or in Greenwich Village tubs, or in the sink of a Chinatown one-bedroom crammed with fifteen people. Some bar opens and the first song on the jukebox is Johnny Thunders, while bums pick up cigarette butts to see what’s left to smoke. The smell of espresso and hot croissants. The weather vane squeaks in the sun. Pigeons are reborn out of the mouths of blue windows.
”
”
Jardine Libaire (White Fur)
“
Why is it that we claim to want certainty? Only fools and cowards seek certainty. Certainty is a dead end; it’s a rich old widow living out the rest of her days on the Upper East Side with a little dog and big memories. Unless you are a senior citizen, you’ll go nuts after a few weeks of knowing what the rest of your life will bring. You’ll die of boredom. But uncertainty is what keeps us alive. It is that flip of a coin, that brief moment when it’s in the air or spinning on its side, that snaps us out of our daily stasis. Some invisible Odds Gods are giving you a chance to become better, smarter, richer. What fun it is to get paid if you earned it by the skin of your teeth, by the close call. And how dreadful it is to shoot fish in a barrel. Exposure to uncertainty earns you membership in a select tribe: You are a Padawan mastering the Force. Once the trade is on, once the die has been cast, you’re in a parallel, auspicious universe.
”
”
K. G. Cohen
“
An “alternative” to the mainstream frat boys and premed straight and narrow guys, these scholarly, charmless, intellectual brats dominated the more creative departments. As an art history major, I couldn’t escape them. “Dudes” reading Nietzsche on the subway, reading Proust, reading David Foster Wallace, jotting down their brilliant thoughts into a black Moleskine pocket notebook. Beer bellies and skinny legs, zip-up hoodies, navy blue peacoats or army green parkas, New Balance sneakers, knit hats, canvas tote bags, small hands, hairy knuckles, maybe a deer head tattooed across a flabby bicep. They rolled their own cigarettes, didn’t brush their teeth enough, spent a hundred dollars a week on coffee. They would come into Ducat, the gallery I ended up working at, with their younger—usually Asian—girlfriends. “An Asian girlfriend means the guy has a small dick,” Reva once said. I’d hear them talk shit about the art. They lamented the success of others. They thought that they wanted to be adored, to be influential, celebrated for their genius, that they deserved to be worshipped. But they could barely look at themselves in the mirror. They were all on Klonopin, was my guess. They lived mostly in Brooklyn, another reason I was glad to live on the Upper East Side.
”
”
Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation)
“
This explained why Upper East Side mothers all wore tiny medallions engraved with their children’s initials around their necks. And stacking rings, one for each child, on their fingers. And entered the names of other mothers in their contacts under the names of their children, so that, on so many of my new friends’ phone and email lists, I came up not as “Wednesday Martin” but as “Eliot M/ mother, Wednesday M.” We were our children, utterly merged together.
”
”
Wednesday Martin (Primates of Park Avenue)
“
Relations among women on the Upper East Side are charged as they are perhaps nowhere else in the country or the world, and handbags, like cars, just might serve a lot of different functions all at once. A communication about where one stands in the inevitable hierarchy of Manhattan, a barometer of your wealth and connectedness and clout in a city where money and connections and clout are everything. A fashion statement. A security blanket, a way of self-soothing in a uniquely stressful town.
”
”
Wednesday Martin (Primates of Park Avenue)
“
Millwall fans are an earthy bunch, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but many of them lack social graces, and the demographics are far removed from architect’s impressions of the New Den, which is a superb ground.
It must be said, however, that their chant of, “Meerrrr!” sounds more like a flock of lambs being led to the slaughter. I don’t wish to disillusion the Millwall faithful, for they may feel that the “Meerrrr!” chant makes them sound tough ….. but it doesn’t.
Trust me, from the East Upper Stand it sounds more like a bleat than a roar.
When we got to London Bridge – still considered to be part of the Millwall Manor – I observed a man in his late thirties (old enough to know better) give the “Meerrrrr!” bleat, and it had a strange effect on him, for he immediately started to swagger. His knees pushed out to the side, he rolled his shoulders and his face lit up with an unpleasant smirk, as if to say, “Did you see me? I said Meerrrr!
”
”
Karl Wiggins (Gunpowder Soup)
“
I had thought the Upper East Side could shield me from the beauty pageants and cockfights of the art scene in which I’d “worked” in Chelsea. But living uptown had infected me with its own virus when I first moved there. I’d tried being one of those blond women speed walking up and down the Esplanade in spandex, Bluetooth in my ear like some self-important asshole, talking to whom—Reva? On the weekends, I did what young women in New York like me were supposed to do, at first: I got colonics and facials and highlights, worked out at an overpriced gym, lay in the hammam there until I went blind, and went out at night in shoes that cut my feet and gave me sciatica.
”
”
Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation)
“
We couldn't afford to go inside. On other days, we would visit art museums. There was only enough money for one ticket, so one of us would go in, look at the exhibits, and report back to the other.
On one such occasion, we went to the relatively new Whitney Museum on the Upper East Side. It was my turn to go in, and I reluctantly entered without him. I no longer remember the exhibit, but I do recall peering through on of the museum's unique trapezoidal windows, seeing Robert across the street, leaning against a parking meter, smoking a cigarette.
He waited for me, and as we headed toward the subway he said, "One day we'll go in together, and the work will be ours.
”
”
Patti Smith (Just Kids)
“
That's how my story ends. With the loss of everyone I have ever loved. With me, in a big, beautiful Upper East Side apartment, missing everyone who ever meant anything to me. When you write the ending, Monique, make sure it’s clear that I don’t love this apartment, that I don’t care about all my money, that I couldn’t give a rat’s ass if people think I’m a legend, that the adoration of millions of people never warmed my bed. When you write the ending, Monique, tell everyone that it is the people I miss. Tell everyone that I got it wrong. That I chose the wrong things most of the time. When you write the ending, Monique, make sure the reader understands that all I was ever really looking for was family. Make sure it’s clear that I found it. Make sure they know that I am heartbroken without it. Spell it out if you have to. Say that Evelyn Hugo doesn’t care if everyone forgets her name. Evelyn Hugo doesn’t care if everyone forgets she was ever alive. Better yet, remind them that Evelyn Hugo never existed. She was a person I made up for them. So that they would love me. Tell them that I was confused, for a very long time, about what love was. Tell them that I understand it now, and I don’t need their love anymore. Say to them, “Evelyn Hugo just wants to go home. It’s time for her to go to her daughter, and her lover, and her best friend, and her mother.” Tell them Evelyn Hugo says good-bye.
”
”
Taylor Jenkins Reid (The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo)
“
einige gitarren, ein klavier, mikrophone von der decke, kleine schaumstoffpyramiden an den wänden. ein studio in new york an der upper east side. es ist ein warmer septemberabend draußen über der stadt. bob dylan verbrachte ihn bis etwa 5 p.m. auf der veranda seines freundes bill clinton, wo die beiden marihuana rauchten und kreatives schlafen praktizierten. bob braucht diese rituale mit freunden, bevor er ins studio geht, seit so vielen jahren, nach so vielen platten. jetzt, pünktlich um 7:34 p.m., sitzt er alleine hier im studio und schaut auf das geöffnete klavier. ähnlich wie helmut schmidt in deutschland darf auch bob dylan an jedem ort hemmungslos rauchen, selbst wenn an der wand ein großes, rot leuchtendes warnschild mit der aufschrift „do never smoke“ angebracht ist. die rauchwolken der siebenten camel filter ziehen wie magisch in den innenraum des flügels, sie stauen sich dort, scheinen sich einzunisten. vor den augen dylans aber wird das klavier zum sarg. er sieht im rauch eine spiegelung seiner eigenen gewohnt gelockten haare, er selbst daran mit dem kopf anmontiert, im besten anzug plus krawatte, eingebettet in verplüschte seitenwände. er wollte doch erste demos für die neue platte aufnehmen, nicht sich selbst im sarg visualisieren. verstimmt dämpft er die zigarette auf seinem linken unterarm aus und legt den stummel zärtlich zu den anderen auf den boden. er ist müde… das gras wirkt wohl immer noch. wie in trance steht er nun auf, verfügt sich zum flügel und platziert sich vor den tasten. im bleiernen halbschlaf geht es jetzt los.
(0201)
”
”
David Ramirer (2015 - fuck me tender)
“
Forbes cost of living extremely well index (CLEWI) An amazing thing I came across while researching the question of just what it is that very very rich people do with their money. As Forbes says, the CLEWI is to the very rich what the CPI is to “ordinary people.” There are forty items on it, and they are hilarious, though perhaps you shouldn’t show them to your left-wing aunt if she’s suffering from high blood pressure: Russian sable fur coats from Bloomingdale’s, shirts from Turnbull and Asser, Gucci loafers, handmade John Lobb shoes, a year at Groton boarding school, a yacht, a horse, a pool, a Learjet, a Roller, a case of Dom Perignon, forty-five minutes at a psychiatrist’s on the Upper East Side (!), an hour’s estate planning with a lawyer, and, amusingly/annoyingly, a year at Harvard.36 In 2012, the CLEWI went up 2.6 percent but the CPI went up only 1.4 percent.
”
”
John Lanchester (How to Speak Money: What the Money People Say-And What It Really Means: What the Money People Say―And What It Really Means)
“
Downtown, Dean & DeLuca imported goat cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, and ingredients that nobody knew about. On the Upper West Side, Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso of the Silver Palate worked magic with raspberry vinegar and made Chicken Marbella the “must-serve” dish for every dinner party. At E.A.T. on the Upper East Side, Eli Zabar prepared the most delicious take-out salads, dinners, cheeses, and baked goods, and later he started baking his own bread, which was a revolution in itself. There was a store called Fay and Allen’s Foodworks, which dazzled customers with a five-foot display of fresh caviar and 160 cheeses. At Word of Mouth, Eileen Weinberg and Christi Finch made quiches with unusual ingredients, memorably eggplant with a whisper of dill and a mustard glaze, and cold pasta salads that nobody had done before, like tortellini, ham, green and red peppers, and salsa verde.
”
”
Ina Garten (Be Ready When the Luck Happens)
“
They tell us that women make loud noises during sex “from the Lower East Side to the upper reaches of the Amazon”, overlooking the fact that as far as the Amazonian tribes are concerned, signs of female sexual enjoyment are sometimes discouraged and the existence of the female orgasm is often not even recognized. In all of these tribes where we have had the information, female sexual pleasure is either a non-issue, discouraged, or sex is as private and as quiet as possible.
”
”
Lynn Saxon (Sex at Dusk: Lifting the Shiny Wrapping from Sex at Dawn)
“
Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one in the journalism community is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now?
Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband, David, has left her, and her career has stagnated. Regardless of why Evelyn has chosen her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jump-start her career.
Summoned to Evelyn’s Upper East Side apartment, Monique listens as Evelyn unfurls her story: from making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the late ’80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way. As Evelyn’s life unfolds—revealing a ruthless ambition, an unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love—Monique begins to feel a very a real connection to the actress. But as Evelyn’s story catches up with the present, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.
”
”
Taylor Jenkins Reid (The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo)
“
It was clear just how much Tommy loved the city. New York City. The CKY Grocery on Amsterdam had giant, bright red Spartan apples every day of the year, even if it wasn’t the right season. He loved that grocery, and the old, shaky Persian man who owned it. Tommy emphatically, yet erroneously believed that the CKY Grocery was the genuine heart of the great city. All five boroughs embodied distinct feelings for him, but there was only one that he’d ever truly romanticized. To him, Manhattan was the entire world.
He loved everything between the East River and the Hudson; from the Financial District up to Harlem; from Avenue A to Zabar’s. He loved the four
seasons, although autumn was easily the most anticipated. To Tommy, Central Park’s bright, almost copper hues in the fall were the epitome of orange. He loved the unique perfume of deli meats and subway steam. He loved the rain with such verve that every time it so much as drizzled, he would turn to the sky so he could feel the drops sprinkle onto his teeth. Because every raindrop that hit him had already experienced that much envied journey from the tips of the skyscrapers all the way down to the cracked and foot-stamped sidewalks. He believed every inch of the city had its own predetermined genre of music that suited it to a tee. The modal jazz of Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter was absolutely meant for the Upper East Side, north of 61st Street. Precisely between Gershwin and gospel. He loved the view from his apartment, even if it was just the leaves of the tree outside in July or the thin shadows of its bare branches crawling along the plain brick wall in January. Tommy loved his career. He loved his friends. And he loved that first big bite of apple I watched him take each and every morning.
Everything was perfect in the city, and as long as things remained the way he wanted them to, Tommy would continue to love the city forever. Which is exactly why his jaw dropped when he opened the letter he found in his mailbox that morning. The first bite of still un-chewed apple fell out of his mouth and firmly planted itself within the crack of that 113th Street
sidewalk.
”
”
Ryan Tim Morris (The Falling)
“
I like rainbows.
We came back down to the meadow near the steaming terrace and sat in the river, just where one of the bigger hot streams poured into the cold water of the Ferris Fork. It is illegal – not to say suicidal – to bathe in any of the thermal features of the park. But when those features empty into the river, at what is called a hot pot, swimming and soaking are perfectly acceptable. So we were soaking off our long walk, talking about our favorite waterfalls, and discussing rainbows when it occurred to us that the moon was full. There wasn’t a hint of foul weather. And if you had a clear sky and a waterfall facing in just the right direction…
Over the course of a couple of days we hked back down the canyon to the Boundary Creek Trail and followed it to Dunanda Falls, which is only about eight miles from the ranger station at the entrance to the park. Dunanda is a 150-foot-high plunge facing generally south, so that in the afternoons reliable rainbows dance over the rocks at its base. It is the archetype of all western waterfalls. Dunenda is an Indian name; in Shoshone it means “straight down,” which is a pretty good description of the plunge.
...
…We had to walk three miles back toward the ranger station and our assigned campsite. We planned to set up our tents, eat, hang our food, and walk back to Dunanda Falls in the dark, using headlamps. We could be there by ten or eleven. At that time the full moon would clear the east ridge of the downriver canyon and would be shining directly on the fall.
Walking at night is never a happy proposition, and this particular evening stroll involved five stream crossings, mostly on old logs, and took a lot longer than we’d anticipated. Still, we beat the moon to the fall.
Most of us took up residence in one or another of the hot pots. Presently the moon, like a floodlight, rose over the canyon rim. The falling water took on a silver tinge, and the rock wall, which had looked gold under the sun, was now a slick black so the contrast of water and rock was incomparably stark. The pools below the lip of the fall were glowing, as from within, with a pale blue light. And then it started at the base of the fall: just a diagonal line in the spray that ran from the lower east to the upper west side of the wall.
“It’s going to happen,” I told Kara, who was sitting beside me in one of the hot pots.
Where falling water hit the rock at the base of the fall and exploded upward in vapor, the light was very bright. It concentrated itself in a shining ball. The diagonal line was above and slowly began to bend until, in the fullness of time (ten minutes, maybe), it formed a perfectly symmetrical bow, shining silver blue under the moon. The color was vaguely electrical.
Kara said she could see colors in the moonbow, and when I looked very hard, I thought I could make out a faint line of reddish orange above, and some deep violet at the bottom. Both colors were very pale, flickering, like bad florescent light.
In any case, it was exhilarating, the experience of a lifetime: an entirely perfect moonbow, silver and iridescent, all shining and spectral there at the base of Dunanda Falls. The hot pot itself was a luxury, and I considered myself a pretty swell fellow, doing all this for the sanity of city dwellers, who need such things more than anyone else. I even thought of naming the moonbow: Cahill’s Luminescence. Something like that. Otherwise, someone else might take credit for it.
”
”
Tim Cahill (Lost in My Own Backyard: A Walk in Yellowstone National Park (Crown Journeys))
“
Not long after I learned about Frozen, I went to see a friend of mine who works in the music industry. We sat in his living room on the Upper East Side, facing each other in easy chairs, as he worked his way through a mountain of CDs. He played “Angel,” by the reggae singer Shaggy, and then “The Joker,” by the Steve Miller Band, and told me to listen very carefully to the similarity in bass lines. He played Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” and then Muddy Waters’s “You Need Love,” to show the extent to which Led Zeppelin had mined the blues for inspiration. He played “Twice My Age,” by Shabba Ranks and Krystal, and then the saccharine ’70s pop standard “Seasons in the Sun,” until I could hear the echoes of the second song in the first. He played “Last Christmas,” by Wham! followed by Barry Manilow’s “Can’t Smile Without You” to explain why Manilow might have been startled when he first heard that song, and then “Joanna,” by Kool and the Gang, because, in a different way, “Last Christmas” was an homage to Kool and the Gang as well. “That sound you hear in Nirvana,” my friend said at one point, “that soft and then loud kind of exploding thing, a lot of that was inspired by the Pixies. Yet Kurt Cobain” — Nirvana’s lead singer and songwriter — “was such a genius that he managed to make it his own. And ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’?” — here he was referring to perhaps the best-known Nirvana song. “That’s Boston’s ‘More Than a Feeling.’ ” He began to hum the riff of the Boston hit, and said, “The first time I heard ‘Teen Spirit,’ I said, ‘That guitar lick is from “More Than a Feeling.” ’ But it was different — it was urgent and brilliant and new.” He played another CD. It was Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy,” a huge hit from the 1970s. The chorus has a distinctive, catchy hook — the kind of tune that millions of Americans probably hummed in the shower the year it came out. Then he put on “Taj Mahal,” by the Brazilian artist Jorge Ben Jor, which was recorded several years before the Rod Stewart song. In his twenties, my friend was a DJ at various downtown clubs, and at some point he’d become interested in world music. “I caught it back then,” he said. A small, sly smile spread across his face. The opening bars of “Taj Mahal” were very South American, a world away from what we had just listened to. And then I heard it. It was so obvious and unambiguous that I laughed out loud; virtually note for note, it was the hook from “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy.” It was possible that Rod Stewart had independently come up with that riff, because resemblance is not proof of influence. It was also possible that he’d been in Brazil, listened to some local music, and liked what he heard.
”
”
Malcolm Gladwell (What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures)
“
Or…he could have a nine-inch dick, his own helicopter, and a fuck-pad on the Upper East Side, overlooking the park.”
“Yes, because the universe is just that kind.
”
”
A.M. Madden (Not According to Plan (Navarro Triplets, #1))
“
After the Second and Third Avenue Els were torn down, East Side property owners had prospered as brownstones, loft buildings, and tenements were replaced by high-rise offices and apartment buildings. The area east of Central Park between 59th and 96th Streets, known as the Upper East Side, became home to fashionable boutiques, luxury restaurants, and expensive furniture houses. With thousands of well-educated young professionals moving there, the neighborhood contained the greatest concentration of single people in the entire country.3 Even though the number of cars registered in the United States grew by 47 percent in the 1950s, New York City’s economy still relied on the subway in the early 1960s. During the 8:00 to 9:00 a.m. rush hour, 72 percent of the people entering the CBD traveled by subway, which could move people far more efficiently than automobiles. Each subway car could carry approximately one hundred people, and a ten-car train could accommodate a thousand. Since trains could operate every two minutes, each track could carry thirty thousand people per hour. By comparison, one lane of a highway could carry only about two thousand cars in an hour.4 Although Manhattan and the region were dependent on the rail transit system, 750,000 cars and trucks were entering the CBD on a typical weekday, three times more than had been the case thirty years earlier. Many New Yorkers expected the city to accommodate the growing number of cars. For example, the Greater New York Safety Council’s transportation division claimed that Americans had a fundamental freedom to drive, and that it was the city’s obligation to accommodate drivers by building more parking spaces in Manhattan. The members argued that without more parking, Manhattan would not be able to continue its role as the region’s CBD because a growing number of suburbanites were so highly conditioned to using their cars.5 In
”
”
Philip Mark Plotch (Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City)
“
Many East Siders pushed the MTA to add a station at 96th Street. Metropolitan Hospital, a city-owned facility located at 97th Street, sent about one hundred doctors, nurses, and other employees to the hearing. One of its directors charged the MTA with “brutal insensitivity toward the sick poor” and said it was not a coincidence that Rockefeller University and New York Hospital, where the governor was a major benefactor, would have much more convenient access. After the hearing, which lasted four hours and fifteen minutes, the MTA board subsequently voted to add a new station at 96th Street. The Bronx did not have as much political clout as the Upper East Side.
”
”
Philip Mark Plotch (Last Subway: The Long Wait for the Next Train in New York City)
“
Hey there, have you seen a dog? Cute white and brown?"
"Uh, no sorry," Allison said while mouthing to me, 'Roll the window up'.
Allison rolled her eyes, "I haven't," I said, "But I'd be willing to help you."
"Really?" The girl and Allison asked in unison.
"Yea, sure anything to help another dog lover. Hang on." I opened the door and grabbed my purse. Once I got out of the car the girl looked down at my Louis Vuittons, "Those aren't really dog finding shoes."
"Oh yeah? Watch me."
I grabbed her hand and ran towards the sidewalk. I walked up the bustling sidewalk.
"Are you new to New York? Or the Upper East Side? You stick out like a sore thumb.
”
”
Emily Hess (Big City Lights)
“
Some fifteen years earlier, in the mid-’90s, I’d somehow found myself at a dinner on the Upper East Side where a magnum of 1959 Château Margaux was opened for coupling with a main course of leg of lamb and where, once I’d tasted from the glass poured for me, I finally understood the logic behind spending thousands of dollars on a bottle of something to drink. I was no connoisseur. I couldn’t tell a berry note from a chocolate nose or discern the hint of spring flowers the dining guest beside me picked up, she said, developing as it sat in the glass. What I experienced was, perhaps, all the more remarkable for my having so virgin a palate. On my tongue, the wine disappeared almost magically into pure sensation, an absorbing congeries of rich and dusky hints—insinuations of bitterness tempered by the faintest echoes of something once sweet, now round and gathering—a developing flavor that revealed some ideal to which my every previous encounter with red wine appeared to have been pointing all along. And even more remarkable than this almost disincarnate sensation was the disincarnation itself, the effortless sublimation of liquid into pure savor, conveying me to the threshold of some essential idea of wine itself, a frictionless passage into the immaterial that felt, quite frankly, like something metaphysical
”
”
Ayad Akhtar (Homeland Elegies)
“
from New Jersey who’d pretended to be from England, who’d created a character that specifically, smartly, preyed on the status-obsessed dupes of the Upper East Side.
”
”
Emma Rosenblum (Bad Summer People)
“
If the Upper East Side were a pound, beware. Someone is not locking
the cages. The bitches are on the loose.
”
”
The Guy Who Knows (The Untold Stories of Madison Avenue: Behind the Botox: Gossip, Glamour, and the Secrets of Madison Avenue)
“
Shake Shack- The now multinational, publicly traded fast-food chain was inspired by the roadside burger stands from Danny's youth in the Midwest and serves burgers, dogs, and concretes- frozen custard blended with mix-ins, including Mast Brothers chocolate and Four & Twenty Blackbirds pie, depending on the location.
Blue Smoke- Another nod to Danny's upbringing in the Midwest, this Murray Hill barbecue joint features all manner of pit from chargrilled oysters to fried chicken to seven-pepper brisket, along with a jazz club in the basement.
Maialino- This warm and rustic Roman-style trattoria with its garganelli and braised rabbit and suckling pig with rosemary potatoes is the antidote to the fancy-pants Gramercy Park Hotel, in which it resides.
Untitled- When the Whitney Museum moved from the Upper East Side to the Meatpacking District, the in-house coffee shop was reincarnated as a fine dining restaurant, with none other than Chef Michael Anthony running the kitchen, serving the likes of duck liver paté, parsnip and potato chowder, and a triple chocolate chunk cookie served with a shot of milk.
Union Square Café- As of late 2016, this New York classic has a new home on Park Avenue South. But it has the same style, soul, and classic menu- Anson Mills polenta, ricotta gnocchi, New York strip steak- as it first did when Danny opened the restaurant back in 1985.
The Modern- Overlooking the Miró, Matisse, and Picasso sculptures in MoMA's Sculpture Garden, the dishes here are appropriately refined and artistic. Think cauliflower roasted in crab butter, sautéed foie gras, and crispy Long Island duck.
”
”
Amy Thomas (Brooklyn in Love: A Delicious Memoir of Food, Family, and Finding Yourself)
“
New Yorkers liked Sadik-Khan’s bike lanes and the plazas; they liked the 800 more acres of parks—though Parks had cut its staff 40% between 2008 and 2012 even as the Central Park Conservancy boasted a $183 million endowment—and three-quarters of a million more trees. A certain texture was gone though, easy to see on the Upper East Side where almost a third of the apartments between 49th and 70th between Fifth and Park were vacant ten months a year, owned by shell companies and LLCs. The neighborhood was a kind of jewelry store now, apartments tended and traded for their speculative value. Yet the idea of New York City was bigger and broader than it had ever been. By 2010, 37% of New York’s residents were immigrants, two-thirds living in Brooklyn and Queens, and as much as globalization had helped gut the city’s manufacturing base, they’d been at least as much responsible for hatching its evolutions as anything done at One Police Plaza or City Hall. While Wall Street had been mining wealth for itself, immigrants from around the world had rebuilt the day-to-day economy; from 1994 to 2004, businesses in neighborhoods like Flushing and Sunset Park grew by as much as 55%. Half of the city’s accountants
”
”
Thomas Dyja (New York, New York, New York: Four Decades of Success, Excess, and Transformation (Must-Read American History))
“
It must have been quite the scandal. After all, Upper East Side princesses only ever do what they are told. Our only real purpose in life is to look pretty, obey, and breed. Like purebred bitches.
”
”
Zoe Blake (The More I Hate (Gilded Decadence #1))
“
Dicen que hay que pararse frente a una tela de Rothko como frente a un amanecer. Son cuadros bellísimos, pero la belleza puede ser sublime o puede ser decorativa, y en los livings neoyorquinos del Upper East Side sus cuadros combinaban deliciosamente bien con los sofás de cuero y las alfombras de angora.
”
”
María Gainza (Optic Nerve)
“
Sometimes I forget how much I love my wife, and maybe I don’t always say it or show it, but then when a situation becomes dangerous, I realize I could lose her. I try to picture a life without her, living alone in New York in a big apartment on the fashionable Upper East Side, surrounded by trendy bars and restaurants bursting with single women… Is this coming out right?
”
”
Nelson DeMille
“
I want to burn the fucking world.
”
”
August Jones (The Heir's Disgrace (Doormen of the Upper East Side Book 1))
“
I’m not scared.”
“Neither am I. And I’m falling in love with you.
”
”
August Jones (The Heir's Disgrace (Doormen of the Upper East Side Book 1))
“
Lie back for me, baby.”
He whimpers against my mouth. “What happened to Peach?”
“It was always supposed to be baby.
”
”
August Jones (The Heir's Disgrace (Doormen of the Upper East Side Book 1))
“
....you told me you never wanted to see me again?”
“I don’t think I said that.”
“That’s what it felt like.”
He gives me a weak excuse for a smirk. “You’re such an only child sometimes.
”
”
August Jones (The Heir's Disgrace (Doormen of the Upper East Side Book 1))
“
John Berger deambulando por el primer piso de un centro comercial del Upper East Side de Manhattan mientras observa a los clientes es un ejemplo palmario de atención en acción. Vestido con una anodina chaqueta negra, camisa blanca, corbata roja y el walkie-talkie siempre en la mano,
”
”
Daniel Goleman (Focus: Desarrollar la atención para alcanzar la excelencia)
“
After thirty-plus years as a latter-day robber baron and almost as many as a fiercely acquisitive retiree, the old man clapped both hands to his head, made a sound like a peevish crow, and collapsed to the floor. He landed in the middle of the immense Aubusson carpet in the Great Room of Galtonbrook Hall, the pile of marble that had been his home and would be his memorial. Galtonbrook Hall loomed less than half a mile from Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, and an ambulance got there in minutes, but they didn’t have to rush. Martin Greer Galton, born March 7, 1881, in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, was almost certainly dead by the time he hit the floor. Now, fifty years later, his house lived on. He’d devoted the first half of his life to making money and the second half to spending it, collecting art and artifacts in great profusion, and building Galtonbrook Hall to house himself for his lifetime and his treasures for all eternity. That at least was the plan, and he’d funded the enterprise sufficiently to see it carried out. What had been a home was now a museum, open to the public six days a week. Out-of-towners rarely found their way to the Galtonbrook; it didn’t get star treatment in the guidebooks, and it was miles from midtown, miles from the Upper East Side’s Museum Mile. As a result it was rarely crowded. You had to know about it and you had to have a reason to go there, and if you were in the neighborhood you’d probably wind up at the Cloisters instead. “We’ll go to the Galtonbrook the next time,” you’d tell yourself, but you wouldn’t. Neither Carolyn nor I had been there until our visit five days earlier, on a Thursday afternoon. We’d stood in front of a portrait of a man in a plumed hat, and its brass label identified it as the work of Rembrandt. The guidebook I’d consulted had its doubts, and repeated an old observation: Rembrandt painted two hundred portraits, of which three hundred are in Europe and four hundred in the United States of America. “So it’s a fake,” she said. “If it is,” I said, “we only know
”
”
Lawrence Block (The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (Bernie Rhodenbarr, #11))
“
We couldn't afford to go inside. On other days, we would visit art museums. There was only enough money for one ticket, so one of us would go in, look at the exhibits, and report back to the other.
On one such occasion, we went to the relatively new Whitney Museum on the Upper East Side. It was my turn to go in, and I reluctantly entered without him. I no longer remember the exhibit, but I do recall peering through on of the museum's unique trapezoidal windows, seeing Robert across the street, leaning against a parking meter, smoking a cigarette.
He waited for me, and as we headed toward the subway he said, "One day we'll go in together, and the work will be ours.
”
”
Patti Smith Just Kids
“
Because there was an apartment in the Monroe on the Upper East Side that was full of magic, and it taught me how to say goodbye. And it was no longer mine. That didn’t matter, though, because I carried all of the good moments with me, the walls and the furniture—the claw-foot tub and the robin’s-egg blue chair—and the way my aunt danced me around the living room, so no matter where I was, I would always be home. Because the things that mattered most never really left. The love stays. The love always stays, and so do we.
”
”
Ashley Poston (The Seven Year Slip)
“
CAROLINA WEISS, ONETIME RUSSIAN countess now A & E mechanic, boarded the 42nd Street Crosstown bus, westbound, at Second Avenue, the southern threshold of the fashionable Upper East Side, where every terrace is haunted by reminders of the past. Nervously she
”
”
Donald E. Westlake (Comfort Station)
“
Ididn’t see the eyeliner coming. I also can’t say what it is about the fact that Christian is wearing eyeliner that’s making me that much more eager to get him down to The Dungeon. I’ve never been sexually attracted to a man before, but I do find watching men together sexy.
”
”
August Jones (The Sinner's Sanctuary (Doormen of the Upper East Side Book 3))
“
Fuck, I cannot get a crush on Gibson Hayes. He’s my boss. He knew my father. He’s married. He’s straight.
”
”
August Jones (The Sinner's Sanctuary (Doormen of the Upper East Side Book 3))
“
It’s exactly that deep,” he says, his eyes darkening with an intensity that I swear I feel in my balls. “Everyone has limits. Soft limits that can be tested and hard limits that can’t be touched.
”
”
August Jones (The Sinner's Sanctuary (Doormen of the Upper East Side Book 3))
“
He’s been a slap in the face, waking up something inside me that wants to take and stroke and bite and hit. Something that wants to kiss and suck and thrash. Do I want to fuck him?
”
”
August Jones (The Sinner's Sanctuary (Doormen of the Upper East Side Book 3))
“
Most importantly, Bill and I welcomed the arrival of our grandson, Aidan, on June 18, 2016, at Lenox Hill Hospital on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It was a sunny day with hardly a cloud in the sky—a prediction, perhaps, of his personality. He is the happiest little boy.
”
”
Hillary Rodham Clinton (What Happened)
“
At least, Hillary thought they were her people until she took their money and lost to Trump. I’ll never forget sitting in the Upper East Side home of one of Hillary’s most loyal Friends and Family shortly after the November election. “Look around,” this Friend said. I turned my head to scan the panoramic views of Manhattan, the winding marble staircase, the original Monet on the walls, the untouched crystal plate of macaroons on the table. “I’m not a loser. Hillary is a L-O-S-E-R,” the Friend said, making an L with one hand and holding it against the forehead.
”
”
Amy Chozick (Chasing Hillary: On the Trail of the First Woman President Who Wasn't)
“
Even the streetcars moved at a more languorous pace, like great serpents swimming through a darkness made thick by the cast-off regrets of the day. I forestalled answering my own question by stopping at the corner of Thirty-third Street to peer across the avenue at the moonlit remains of what once had been the mansion of John Jacob Astor. I had read in the newspaper that his son, to spite the mother, was going to raze the old building and erect a fine hotel. There it sat, half dismantled, like the rotting carcass of some behemoth washed ashore in a painting by Vedder. Here was a testament to the corrosive power of the city’s new wealth. Even the old gods and their legacies were not protected from its onslaught. The new deity was fortune, and there was an army of Reeds willing to adjust their moral barometers in order to join the priesthood. Its catechism trickled down from the upper reaches of Manhattan Island all the way to the Lower East Side, where immigrant families chased the insubstantial spirit of what they could not readily grasp.
”
”
Jeffrey Ford (The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque)
“
Around the Upper East Side, it’s not unusual to see cover-girl models on the street, but every so often you see one so stunning that you feel like passing out as she walks by.
”
”
Ken Perenyi (Caveat Emptor: The Secret Life of an American Art Forger)
“
Urbana Properties manages luxury apartment rentals in NYC facing central park in exclusive areas such as 5th Ave, Upper East Side, Central Park in Manhattan. Discover our spacious luxury NYC apartment rental floorplans, central park views, private floors and white glove service.
”
”
Urbana Properties
“
Sighing, she shifted restlessly in her seat. Her eyes felt gritty and hot, and her muscles ached with fatigue. She glanced down at her carry-on canvas bag, filled with final exams she needed to mark before she returned to her position as history teacher at Stirling Academy for Girls on Manhattan’s rarefied Upper East Side. She couldn’t face the exams yet and so she looked away, stabbing the button to power up the little screen installed in the back of the seat in front of her. Endless entertainment was what she needed.
”
”
Kate Hewitt (A Yorkshire Christmas (Christmas Around the World Series, #2))
“
In the 1950s Detroit was undergoing changes in the city and factories with enormous political consequences. When I arrived in Detroit the city had just begun Urban Renewal (which blacks renamed “Negro Removal”) in the area near downtown where most blacks were concentrated. Hastings Street and John R, the two main thoroughfares that were the hub of the commerce and nightlife of the black community, were still alive with pedestrians. Large sections of the inner city, however, were being bulldozed to build the Ford Freeway crisscrossing the city from east to west, the Lodge Freeway bisecting the city from north to south, and the Fisher and Chrysler Freeways coming from Toledo and proceeding all the way north to the Upper Peninsula. These freeways were built to make it easy to live in the suburbs and work in the city and at the same time to expand the car market. So in 1957 whites began pouring out of the city by the tens of thousands until by the end of the decade one out of every four whites who had lived in the city had left. Their exodus left behind thousands of houses and apartments for sale and rental to blacks who had formerly been confined inside Grand Boulevard, a horseshoe-shaped avenue delimiting the inner city, many of whom had been uprooted by Negro Removal. Blacks who had been living on the East Side, among them Annie Boggs, began buying homes on the West Side and the North End. The black community was not only expanding but losing the cohesiveness it had enjoyed (or endured) when it was jammed together on the Lower East Side. New neighbors no longer served as extended family to the young people growing up in the new black neighborhoods. Small businesses owned by blacks and depending on black customers went bankrupt, eliminating an entrepreneurial middle class that had played a key role in stabilizing the community. By the end of the 1950s one-fourth of the buildings inside the Boulevard stood vacant. At the same time all Americans, regardless of race, creed, or national origin, were being seduced by the consumerism being fostered by large corporations so that they could sell the abundance of goods coming off the American assembly lines. All around us in the black community parents were determined to give their children “the things I didn’t have.
”
”
Grace Lee Boggs (Living for Change: An Autobiography)
“
It’s the kind of gratitude you have, she said, “when you’ve had a teacher who’s brilliant, who has shown you the way in a fundamental sense, not in a relative sense. Who has really been able to help you see for yourself the fundamental reality beyond the duality of good and evil.” Alas, she added, Zen Buddhists can “forget that we have to live in the relative world of good and evil, that we have to make choices based on right and wrong.
”
”
Mark Oppenheimer (The Zen Predator of the Upper East Side (Kindle Single))
“
Abri o Post e vi uma fotografia da mulher do meu antigo patrão, enrolada no toldo de um restaurante chinês no Upper East Side. Parece que ela tinha executado um duplo salto a partir da janela do seu apartamento nas alturas e não conseguira chegar ao pavimento. Portanto, acho que afinal, não era assim tão feliz.
”
”
Anthony Bourdain (Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly)
“
The women of the Upper East Side, Dallas, Palm Beach, and even Silicon Valley all felt just a bit better about their choice in party planner knowing that they could tell the ladies at SoulCycle or Pilates that yes, the wedding is overwhelming, but at least they have that fabulous girl from Good Morning, Later helping them out, so things are under control. Those kinds of bragging rights carried a premium. In the aftermath of the Spice It Up debacle, Olga realized that she’d allowed herself to become distracted from the true American dream—accumulating money—by its phantom cousin, accumulating fame. She would never make that mistake again.
”
”
Xóchitl González (Olga Dies Dreaming)
“
So what happens when an entire generation stands to benefit from the economic spoils of their parents’ work? Enter millennials—the children of baby boomers. For example, many of my peers at Harvard and at Yale grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, attended Ethical Culture Fieldston School, and then matriculated at Ivy League colleges, often advantaged by their parents’ alumni status. These were the kids who needed at once to benefit from their parentally endowed privileges while also being morally superior to their parents for recognizing those privileges. Becoming woke to genetically inherited attributes like “whiteness” fit the bill perfectly, since it allowed an entire generation to blame their forefathers for the sin they had inherited at birth. It wasn’t quite their fault; it was someone else’s sin that they were merely burdened with.
”
”
Vivek Ramaswamy (Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam)
“
I’ve always thought of the East Side of NY as a terribly lonely place.
”
”
Meg Fee (Places I Stopped on the Way Home: A Memoir of Chaos and Grace)
“
From the outside, neither Ginsburg seemed like anyone’s version of “alternative.” In New York, they had lived on the posh Upper East Side, on East Sixty-Ninth Street, and sent their children to Dalton and Brearley, private schools for the city’s elite. Marty used to sardonically describe his work as having been “devoted to protecting the deservedly rich from the predations of the poor and downtrodden.” On weekends, they golfed.
”
”
Irin Carmon (Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg)
“
The most astonishing, countercultural truth in the kingdom of Jesus is that love and acceptance have zero basis in worth or accomplishment. A billionaire in the Upper East Side in New York City is no more worthy of love and acceptance than the schizophrenic homeless man sleeping in an alley in the Bronx. Before any of us build a business or declare bankruptcy, before we earn a PhD or drop out of high school, before we establish a soup kitchen or star in a porn video, we are equally loved by the God who shows no favoritism. Our personal success does not attract his love, nor does our failure expand or contract it. The God who is love loves us indiscriminately, passionately, furiously. That love was on cosmic display when, atop a Roman tree of crucifixion, Jesus became the millionaire and the addict, the nun and the stripper, the newborn baby and the wrinkled octogenarian. All humanity—with its sores and wounds and twisted souls and barren lives and evil-infested pasts—he became, that all humanity might become, in him, resplendent in the eyes of the Father.
”
”
Chad Bird (Upside-Down Spirituality: The 9 Essential Failures of a Faithful Life)
“
We’ve grown tired of Manhattan’s “glamour,” which, like the knockoff Coach bags sold on Canal Street and the Botoxed faces on the Upper East Side, is, in reality, fake as hell.
”
”
Daphne Palasi Andreades (Brown Girls)
“
The fervour accompanying these events may be deceptive. If it expresses nothing more than the zeal with which the countries of the East are casting aside the bonds of ideology, or if it is a mimetic fervour - a tribute, as it were, to those liberal countries where all liberty has already been traded in for a technically easy life - then we shall have found out definitively what freedom is worth, and that it is probably never to be discovered a second time. History offers no second helpings. On the other hand, it could be that the present thaw in the East may be as disastrous in the long term as the excess of carbon dioxide in the upper atmosphere, that it may bring about a political greenhouse effect, and so overheat human relations on the planet that the melting of the Communist ice-sheet will cause Western seaboards to be submerged. Odd that we should be in such absolute fear of the melting of the polar ice, and look upon it as a climatic catastrophe, while we aspire with every democratic bone in our bodies to the occurrence of just such an event on the political plane.
If in the old days the USSR had released its gold reserves onto the world market, that market would have been completely destabilized. Today, by putting back into circulation their vast accumulated store of freedom, the Eastern countries could quite easily destabilize that very fragile balance of Western values which strives to ensure that freedom no longer emerges as action but only as a virtual and consensual form of interaction; no longer as a drama but merely as the universal psychodrama of liberalism. A sudden infusion of freedom as a real currency, as violent and active transcendence, as Idea, would be in every way catastrophic for our present air-conditioned redistribution of values. Yet this is precisely what we are asking of the East: freedom, the image of freedom, in exchange for the material signs of freedom.
This is an absolutely diabolical contract, by virtue of which one signatory is in danger of losing their soul, and the other of losing their creature comforts. But perhaps - who knows? - this may, after all, be the best thing for both sides.
Those societies that were formerly masked - Communist societies - have been unmasked. What is their face like? As for us, we dropped the mask long ago and have for a long time been without either mask or face. We are also without memory. We have reached the point of searching the water for signs of a memory that has left no traces, hoping against hope that something might remain when even the water's molecular memory has faded away. So it goes for our freedom: we would be hard put to it to produce a single sign of it, and we have been reduced to postulating its infinitesimal, intangible, undetectable existence in a (programmatic, operational) environment so highly dilute that in truth only a spectre of freedom floats there still, in a memory every bit as evanescent as water's.
”
”
Jean Baudrillard (The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena)
“
One second, I think I’m making a huge mistake by leaving him here in this city, all by himself, and then the next thought that flashes through my mind involves pressing my mouth to his and showing him how much I appreciate him instead of all these cheap words he’ll forget the second I drive away. In the end, that’s how I know leaving is the only choice that won’t ruin us both.
”
”
August Jones (The Muse's Undoing (Doormen of the Upper East Side Book 2))
“
My sexual awakening was like a category five hurricane, and I haven’t escaped its path since. Those nine months with Fischer were the eye of the storm. Since he left, I’ve consumed the landscape. Yes, I’m obsessed with beauty, but I find beauty in all forms, and I revel in it.
”
”
August Jones (The Muse's Undoing (Doormen of the Upper East Side Book 2))
“
Even if he does see me as a needy little brother, I consider him my best friend, and maybe a too frequently indulged fantasy.
”
”
August Jones (The Muse's Undoing (Doormen of the Upper East Side Book 2))
“
We’re finally in a groove. I have an important place in his life. He’s such a good friend and brother to me now—treating me with respect and even admiration. Gratitude and appreciation. I can’t handle fucking that up for something as stupid as an inappropriate crush.
”
”
August Jones (The Muse's Undoing (Doormen of the Upper East Side Book 2))
“
Sex and control are how I’ve coped with feeling like half a person. My muses have helped me through some of the rougher times. They offer sex with passion, which feeds my obsessive tendencies, but it’s all in the name of my art, which is an extension of me, but not me.
”
”
August Jones (The Muse's Undoing (Doormen of the Upper East Side Book 2))
“
Maggie calls me a serial monogamist. But the truth is, my heart’s not available. It picked its person a long time ago.
”
”
August Jones (The Muse's Undoing (Doormen of the Upper East Side Book 2))
“
Did you have a good night?” I frown. “Yeah. Sure.” “What was your favorite part?” he asks. The moment his hands went up my shorts. “Watching you eat it on the rug.” He snorts a laugh and snuggles closer, wrapping his arm over my chest and resting his nose against the nape of my neck. His breath blows down my spine. “I liked it when you called me princess.
”
”
August Jones (The Muse's Undoing (Doormen of the Upper East Side Book 2))
“
I’ve been attracted to him for a long time, but last night that attraction felt like a whole other person inside of me—viscerally real and starving. Damn near chomping at the bit to put my mouth all over him.
”
”
August Jones (The Muse's Undoing (Doormen of the Upper East Side Book 2))
“
The way I feel about my brother is complicated, but being with him is the easiest thing in the world.
”
”
August Jones (The Muse's Undoing (Doormen of the Upper East Side Book 2))
“
What I also am—more painfully—is love starved. Matthew is warm, and while he’s not much
”
”
August Jones (The Muse's Undoing (Doormen of the Upper East Side Book 2))
“
My love for him has its own drawer in my mind. Recently, I’ve cleared out a new drawer for him where I’ve put sex. But it would require an armoire built by both of us to contain in love.
”
”
August Jones (The Muse's Undoing (Doormen of the Upper East Side Book 2))
“
What are you doing to me?” he says on a breath as he nuzzles into my neck, and I hold him close. “I’m trying to chain you to my soul,” I say, clearly out of my mind.
”
”
August Jones (The Muse's Undoing (Doormen of the Upper East Side Book 2))
“
Would you have broken my heart?” “Not back then. I didn’t have it in me.” “But now?” “Now there is no me without you.
”
”
August Jones (The Muse's Undoing (Doormen of the Upper East Side Book 2))
“
It’s easier to think of us like we are now. Inevitable. Inseparable. Together.
”
”
August Jones (The Muse's Undoing (Doormen of the Upper East Side Book 2))