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It is possible in twenty other American cities to visit first-rate art museums, to hear good music and see lively experimental theater,
人們有可能在二十個其他的美國城市里參觀到第一流的藝術博物館，聽到美妙的音樂，看到生動活潑的實驗戲劇，
to meet intelligent and sophisticated people who know how to live, dine, and talk well; and to enjoy all this in congenial and spacious surroundings.
遇到懂得怎樣生活、吃飯和談話，而且是在舒適寬敞的環境中去享受這一切聰明而又世故的人物。
The New Yorkers still wouldn’t want to live there.
然而，紐約人還是不愿意居住在那里。
What he would find missing is what many outsiders find oppressive and distasteful about New York – its rawness, tension, urgency;
他所戀戀不舍的正是紐約的那些在許多外地人看來難以忍受、令人討厭的地方…它的粗俗、緊張、急迫感，
its bracing competitiveness; the rigor of its judgments; and the congested, democratic presence of so many other New Yorkers, encased in their own worlds, the defeated are not hidden away somewhere else on the wrong side of town.
它那劍拔弩張的競爭，它那嚴厲苛刻的評判，以及那么多封閉在各自的小圈子里、不分尊卑貴賤地擠作一團的紐約人。那些在競爭中吃了敗仗的人并非躲在城里某個看不見的地方。
In the subways, in the buses, in the streets, it is impossible to avoid people whose lives are harder than yours.
在地鐵里，在公共汽車上，在大街上，到處都會不可避免地遇見一些生活過得比你艱難的人。
With the desperate, the ill, the fatigued, the overwhelmed, one learns not to strike up conversation (which isn’t wanted ) but to make brief, sympathetic eye contact, to include them in the human race.
對于那些悲觀絕望、疾病纏身、精疲力竭、不知所措的人，最好不要與之交談(他們并不希望交談).只需用同情的目光稍稍接觸一下，表示把他們視同人類就行了。
It isn’t much, but it is the fleeting hospitality of New Yorkers, each jealous of his privacy in the crowd.
這雖沒什么了不起，但對于最忌在大庭廣眾之中暴露隱私的紐約人來說，這就是他們那種一閃即逝的友好表示。
Ever helpfulness is often delivered as a taunt: a man, rushing the traffic light, shouts the man behind him.
即使是一種幫助，紐約人往往也要用嘲罵來表示：一個人闖紅燈，沖到一輛開過來的汽車前，他身后的那個人便會大聲喊叫：
“ You want to be wearing a Buick with Jersey plates?” — great scorn in the word Jersey, home of drivers who don’t belonghere.
"當心點，老弟，你難道想讓一輛帶著澤西牌照的汽車撞倒嗎?"--"澤西"一詞具有很強的諷刺意味，指的是所有的外地司機的家鄉。
