I have enjoyed the years enormously in Cleveland and especially in Baltimore.
There is not one New York but thousands - mixed-up conurbations and microclimates with their own internal logics and charms, dreams and juxtapositions, faces and tongues.
One of the many reasons I love living in New York is that we get a front row seat to the innumerable thrills that take place here - from conventions and awards shows, to parades and U.N. assemblies. But my favorite New York tradition is the annual New Year's Eve ball-drop on Times Square.
This is the contradictory desire in our utopia. We want to live in a small community with which we can identify and yet we want all the facilities of the city of millions of people. We want to have very intense urban experiences and yet we want the open space right next to us.
I've lived most of my life in Manhattan, but as close as Brooklyn is to Manhattan, there are people who live there who have been to Manhattan maybe once or twice.
I'm a product of the city for sure.
I wrote a book of essays about New York called 'The Colossus of New York,' but it's not about - you know, when I'm writing about rush hour or Central Park, it's not a black Central Park, it's just Central Park, and it's not a black rush hour, it's just rush hour.
The travel that I've spent around the country, I always come back with ideas for L.A. and vice versa: My experiences in L.A. give me an immediacy to issues that sometimes people in Washington think about but aren't experiencing every day.
Well, I'm kind of an urban girl, I like big cities. I like New York, I like London, I like L.A. I like people, I get lonely, really, really easily. But, I think it was good. It was very different and I think that's good.
I've lived so much life as a young man. New Orleans, we got terms, and one's like, 'He jumped off the porch early.' That's kind of what happened to me. I had to grow up really quick.
London can be a platform to look at what living in contemporary Britain is all about.
'Nuyorican Soul' has a lot to do with our lives, growing up in New York, listening to all different styles of music, hanging out with all different kinds of people.
