One of the things I love about living in New York is you just walk outside your door and encounter languages, costumes, stories, music from the other side of the world--all in the space of one block (mine looks pretty much like this one).You also get to hear wonderful snippets of conversation. Which makes it even better as a writer since your whole job is really to notice, or as Henry James put it, "be someone on whom nothing is lost".
In fact, one of my all time favorite lines I ever heard anyone say was walking down my street on the Upper West Side. A small boy wearing a monster mask was chasing his father roaring, "I'm going to eat you with my mouth!" It was quite the scariest thing he could think to say (so scary I think that he was scaring himself) and it stuck in my brain and went into my notebook.
A year later I heard it coming out of the mouth of the terrifying Clasp in Handbag Friends. (In case you haven't heard it from Clasp's mouth, you're missing something, don't delay, quick click here immediately!)
