Wealth & Money Quote by Phyllis Diller

New York doesn’t just have an accent; it has a default setting, and Phyllis Diller nails it with the efficiency of a one-liner that doubles as a cultural diagnosis. The joke hinges on an absurd premise - the only plausible reason three New Yorkers could share a cab peacefully is that something criminally unnatural has occurred. It’s a flattering insult: New Yorkers are painted as argumentative, high-strung, allergic to small talk and compromise, yet also so vividly alive that silence reads as suspicious.

Diller’s intent isn’t to smear the city as much as to mythologize it. She’s compressing an entire mid-century media image of New York into a single scene: cramped space, forced proximity, instant friction. The cab becomes a pressure cooker where personality can’t hide. If nobody’s fighting over money, directions, the window, the driver’s competence, or the very concept of “uptown,” then the social script has been broken. Her punchline restores order by supplying a new script: they’re accomplices.

The subtext is about speed and suspicion. New York is imagined as a place where trust is scarce, where civility is either performative or strategic, and where crime lore sits comfortably next to everyday logistics. Diller, a comedian who made domestic chaos and social frustration her signature, taps into the era’s urban anxieties - and turns them into a wink. The line works because it treats conflict as normal and harmony as the real scandal.