331 Quotes About Chicago

My motto has always been: a hard man is good to find.” Tess gave Hunter’s unflinching bicep a gentle squeeze, claiming it and the man for her own. “And never let the bride stand in the way of me and my hard man.

    "You ever been arrested before?"    "No sir. This is my first time."    "The first time this week, you mean."    "Oh, I been arrested in Michigan. I thought you meant in Illinois. I never been arrested in Illinois. I never did no wrong in Illinois."    "What good does that do you?"    "It don't. It's just that I love my state so much I go to Michigan to steal," he explained with an expression almost beatific.

What a place to put a city, right on the front line of absolute zero. No wonder a cow burned it down.

In this neighborhood, with only forty-five cents, you're a bum. But Sobotnik, even with two dollars, he's still a bum.

    "I'm a guy like this," Gino explained to Jeanie; "I like anythin' against the odds. I don't like nothin' safe. I'm a guy like this too: I don't like gettin' caught. But mostly I'm a guy like this: I don't like gettin' laughed at."    He lived as he drove, as he gambled and as he loved: for keeps. Taking no man's laughter. And letting the small stakes go.

And the men come on again: the flashy and the penitent, the beaten ones and the wise guys, the hangdog heel thieves and the disdainful coneroos, walking, half crouched, through a downpour of light like men walking through rain. The frayed and the hesitant, the sleek and the bold, the odd fish and the callow youths, the good-humored bindle stiffs and the bitter veterans.

She was neither widow nor mother: she only yearned for the dignity of a woman who had once belonged, somewhere, to somebody. She had belonged to no one, for she had never wanted chick nor child. Her idea of home had been any side-alley entrance and a pint of tinted gin. All she had ever striven for was small change left lying by strangers on North Clark Street bars; and any man's bottle at all.

Kids in North Lawndale need not be confused about their prospects: Cook County's Juvenile Temporary Detention Center sits directly adjacent to the neighborhood.

North Lawndale's Jewish People's Institute actively encouraged blacks to move into the neighborhood, seeking to make it a 'pilot community for interracial living.