I've always liked traveling around Europe and seeing the architecture. The buildings in capital cities have been there for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. Some look better than the new ones.
Today I arrived by train in New York City, which I'd never seen before, walked through the grandeur of Grand Central Terminal, stepped outside, got my first look at the city and instantly fell in love with it. Silently, inside myself, I yelled: I should have been born here!
I asked a Jewish man, "Do you know where Michigan Avenue is?" He said, "Yes", and walked away.
Too many people take New York for granted. The primary reason is that history is not taught. That's outrageous in a city where the past is still visible.
No matter how many times I visit New York City, I am always struck by the same thing - a yellow taxicab.
I've hardly ever played urban characters.
There are stories and history everywhere in London.
Every city's got a famous rib place or coffeehouse or dessert place.
And always Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne, over and over the same photo in glaring greens and reds, of a tram, huffy, blunderous, manoeuvring itself with pole akimbo round the tight corner where Bourke Street enters Spring.
The one thing that all great cities have in common is that they are all different.
When I began to write, I was surprised at how little London had been used in crime fiction. Places such as Edinburgh or Oxford or L.A. seemed to have stronger identities.
I am a curious creature and put my finger in as many cakes as I can: history, film, technology, etc. I'm also a freak for urban history, particularly Barcelona, Paris and New York. I know more weird stuff about 19th-century Manhattan than is probably healthy.
'Really,' thought I, 'we call Baltimore the 'Monumental City' for its two marble columns, and here is Edinburg with one at every street-corner!'
I love Chicago. I got on a bus and asked the driver, Do you go to the Loop? He said, No, I go beep-beep!
The bronze dwarfs give you the first clue that Wroclaw is no ordinary city. They lurk all over the place, carousing outside pubs, snoring at the doors of hotels, peeking out from behind the bars of the old city jail.
Houston is undoubtedly my showcase city. I saved all my best buildings for Houston.
One of the small joys that's easy to miss in London is the blue plaques on buildings. These are put up to commemorate the famous on the houses they lived in.
we still have the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building and the Woolworth Building, but it just seems like part of the nature of New York, that it's always shifting.
Like practically everyone who grew up in Miami, I knew little about its history. We were more worried about mangoes falling on our cars.
A country gentleman should bring his lady to visit London as soon as he can, that they may have agreeable topicks for conversation when they are by themselves.
Like 'Sex and the City' - if you're a New Yorker, you knew half the places they were going to. I want 'The Chi' to feel that way as well.
