I liked this excerpt a lot, just in the way New York City as a character is portrayed... (and to just go along with what I wrote about The Zero before) :

" 'I went...for a walk. One night I couldn't sleep. I got up early, before dawn. Got dressed. And I went for a walk. It was spring. Air was fresh and clean. And it was amazing... the shopkeepers misting the flowers, kids delivering papers, and there was this couple standing on the stoop next to my building, holding hands, on this date that neither of them wanted to see end. And it hit me. This is a hard place. God, it's a hard place. But it wakes up every morning. No matter what you do to it the night before. It wakes up."
The old man backed away. He stepped up to throw, but turned and considered Remy's face, "When I saw those lunatics in the Middle East on TV...jumping up and down and celebrating because some nut jobs had murdered three thousand people, you know what I thought?"
Remy shook his head.
"I thought, Fuck you. We used to kill that many ourselves in a good year. This city, it doesn't care about you. Or me. Or them. Or Russell Givens. This city cares about garbage pickup. And trains. That's the secret... what the crazy assholes will never get. You can't tear this place apart. Not this city. We've been doing it ourselves for three hundred years. The goddamn thing always grows back.' "