"I feel battered by culture shock — ­an experience that has mainly served to teach me how little I know, and how much I have falsely assumed"

“What made 147th Street so bad was the kids. They had all grown up right in the neighborhood; now they were killing it, and each other.”

"Jeddy Gates was that increasingly rare phenomenon in American life — a legend who has not become a celebrity"

“They were in Harlem because they were the tough­est guys the department could find, and it ap­peared that if anyone could take care of themselves, and me as well, it would be the people in Sixth Homicide.”

“You know, kid, I never thought they were going to get me.”

“He is a muscular man, 44 years old, no taller than five foot eight inches, and precise in all his movements. Mythology holds him to be the most powerful man in Harlem.”

“When I actually made myself look at Harlem, what I saw was so bizarre that, even with the help of those homicide detectives, I found it bewildering — another country, another planet.”