She found herself longing for home-not just for the hotel but for New York and all the real novels that she could lose herself in there.

Diana felt she was beginning to understand why, in all those novels she read, the headiest loves were the loves that couldn't be.

In New York there is always something to look at, but it is all infinitely more interesting through a window in the backseat of a limousine.

New York is the greatest city in the world.

New York is my home.

I was sitting in my new home in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, horrified like everyone else. I knew which neighborhoods were being hardest hit because I've spent over 25 years going down there, first as a reporter covering Jazz Fest for Billboard and then developing friendships there. As those waters rose, a lot of people knew I had close relationships in New Orleans and started e-mailing me about what was happening there. I couldn't believe it.