A good American makes propaganda for whatever existence has forced him to become. - Saul Bellow

New York makes one think of the collapse of civilization, about Sodom and Gomorrah, the end of the world. The end wouldn't come as a surprise here. Many people already bank on it.

The challenge of modern freedom, or the combination of isolation and freedom which confronts you, is to make yourself up. The danger is that you may emerge from the process as a not-entirely-human creature.
(Referenced in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People by Toby Young)

People don't realize how much they are in the grip of ideas. We live among ideas much more than we live in nature.