Reckon not upon long life: think every day the last, and live always beyond thy account. He that so often surviveth his Expectation lives many Lives, and will scarce complain of the shortness of his days. Time past is gone like a Shadow; make time to come present –.

But if pressed, I’d have to say that what I love most about the subways of New York is what they do not do. One may spend a lifetime looking back – whether regretfully or wistfully, with shame or fondness or sorrow – and thinking how, given the chance, things might have been done differently. But when you enter a subway car and the doors close, you have no choice but to give yourself over to where it is headed. The subway only goes one way: forward.

I have come to believe that kindness is repaid in unexpected ways and that if you are lonely or bone-tired or blue, you need only come down from your perch and step outside. New York – which is to say, New Yorkers – will take care of you.

To be a New Yorker is to be away from the city and feel like you are missing something.

O: ‘Are you conscious of your thoughts before language embodies them?

O: ‘The most we can do is to write – intelligently, creatively, critically, evocatively – about what it is like living in the world at this time.

But taking wrong trains, encountering unexpected delays, and suffering occasional mechanical breakdowns are inevitable to any journey really worth taking. One learns to get oneself turned around and headed the right way.

I cannot take a subway without marveling at the lottery logic that brings together a random sampling of humanity for one minute or two, testing us for kindness and compatibility. Is that not what civility is?

I don’t so much fear death as I do wasting life.” Oliver Sacks.

One can be alive but half-asleep or half-noticing as the years fly, no matter how fully oxygenated the blood and brain or how steadily the heart beats. Fortunately, this is a reversible condition. One can learn to be alert to the extraordinary and press pause – to memorize moments of the everyday.