On New Yorkers.

"As the economic sky seems to be falling, and we each and all hunker down to survive as best we can, I think New Yorkers really do and will derive some consolation from our very physical togetherness. The terror, I think, is mitigated by the fact that we live in crowds, packed into apartment buildings and shoulder to shoulder every day on the streets and in the subways.

We are by our nature armored to survive adversity.

We choose to live in this difficult place, subjecting ourselves to levels of inconvenience and harshness and expense that Americans elsewhere consider insane. New Yorkers self-select for pluck and toughness, since life in the city in the best of times can amount to a kind of Outward Bound experience. We've also chosen to live in a place that has serious seasons, weeks on end each year of cold and slush or hideous heat, rather than in some perpetually balmy Laguna Del This or Playa Del That; just as February makes us savor June all the more, imagine how much more you'll appreciate 2011 after you've survived 2009."

-Because We're Resilient, Kurt Andersen
(New York Magazine, Dec. 22-29, 2008)