My mother came here to New York. She and my grandmother were domestics, cooking, cleaning for other people.

The people really are what make New York City great.

Some of us claim that New York City is the capital of the country, indeed the capital of the world. Now, that may be a bit much for those who don't come from New York, but clearly we are an important city for reasons of our cultural advantages.

My father was a Norwegian tenor and my mother a New York Irish librarian.

People with brains went to New York, and people with faces came West.

The art and culture that is New York, communications, finance, all these things help make up New York. The rest of the country should be happy that we are what we are.