It took Hong Kong 100 years to become what it is.
In writing 'A Portrait of Athens' I have attempted - rather impressionistically - to give a panorama of its present. But I have also brought in its past because I sincerely think that there is a continuity.
I fell in love with New York. It was like every human being, like any relationship. When I was a young New Yorker, it was one city. When I was a grown man, it was another city. I worked with many dance organizations and many wonderful people.
The form of a town changes more swiftly alas! Than the heart of a mortal.
Sometimes, I feel that Manhattan in particular has gotten really tame and gentrified or something.
I left Delhi in 1989 and remember very little of how life used to be then. Increasingly, in my recent visits to Delhi, I've started to realize that the city has become intellectually very lively. It makes me want to discover the city over and over again.
Cities have made the transition from industrial to service economies.
I actually think Johannesburg represents the future. My version of what I think the world is going to become looks like Johannesburg.
San Francisco is an interesting place. It's always been such a nice culturally diverse environment, which it still is, but there's a lot of money there now and a lot of dot com's so it's a little different than it used to be.
I used to live above Manganaro's, when old Times Square was still peaking, and it still had a lot of diners and theaters on the forty deuce, as they used to call it. It was full of character. And it wasn't Disneyland. Now it's so touristy and full of bright lights, I can't stand it. It's like going to a big mall.
New York can be any city it wants to be.
So the city [Pittsburgh] was faced with that question of "What to do now?" because it can't turn back the clock and be what it once was. So thematically, it seemed like the perfect location for the movie. And then, it's a matter of how we get that feeling into the picture and make it a part of [Michael] Chabon's story.
If I were to be really petulant, I would say New York is the one doing the betraying. Because the New York I fell in love with doesn't really exist anymore.
At least Manhattan, in terms of danger and eccentricity, is much more of a theme park now. You couldn't really shoot the old Law & Order in New York today. It's a different city.
New York has never learnt the art of growing old by playing on all its pasts. Its present invents itself, from hour to hour, in the act of throwing away its previous accomplishments and challenging the future. A city composed of paroxysmal places in monumental reliefs.
The trouble with New York today is that it's lost its balance. I love the new, greener New York, but it takes all kinds of worlds to make a World.
I was attracted to the concept of Hollywood and the lifestyle here. But I've grown to mistrust it because it has changed. I didn't bargain for digital access parking in some concrete structure. Real heaven for me was to drive somewhere and park right in front. Now the city is going vertical.
I see the city as an organism, shaped through time by the little humans having habits and doing millions of stuff in and out of it.
I've performed in Auburn Hills, at The Palace, so I haven't really been in downtown Detroit, but I've been able to be here, and I can really see, what the city was. Like, I can feel why Motown started here and how amazing it was.
Caen's San Francisco may not be the city we remember, but it is the city we want to remember.
New York has definitely turned into more of, like, a hipster place.
I have great memories of the old Times Square - wouldn't have missed being here to see that place for the world - but I can also deal with the new Times Square in the overall scheme of N.Y. City 2010.
Any city may have one period of magnificence, like Boston or New Orleans or San Francisco, but it takes a real one to keep renewing itself until the past is perennially forgotten.
I had always thought that Gurgaon was some village, it was only when I came here that I realized that it is nothing less than a world-class city.
In the past Berlin was much more radical and extreme and now it's becoming much more of a conventional European city.
