This
painting is a longtime
favorite of mine; I have a four-foot
reproduction of it hanging up in my
living room. The
fashion of the people and the
diner represented are part of it, but also because of the feeling of
quiet solitude I get whenever I look at it.
Hopper's paintings commonly depict ordinary people as seen through windows; it's a motif he used which helped the viewer feel more like an observer than a participant in the goings-on he was depicting. With this painting you could easily be another nighthawk yourself, walking down the street across from the diner, looking in to see what everyone else was doing up so late.