331 Quotes About Chicago

What is Chicagoness? What is the city made of? Why is it different from any other city? What are the things that are here and only here and compose the here of here? He leaned back in his lawn chair and thought a bit and then he said, “The prevalence of the lake. The way the lake is a sea and not a lake. The way the lake shoulders the city. The cutting of wind off the lake and the whirl of snow.

But never, among all the cities I have wandered over the years, cities all over the earth, did I feel and smell and sense anything quite like the verb that is Chicago; and always, no matter how many years passed, I could hear and see and touch something inside me that only Chicago has and is, some intricate combination of flat sharp light off the lake grappling with dense light from the plains to the west, the fields to the south, the forests to the north.

to be a Cubs fan is both a birthright and a curse.

From the 1930s through the 1960s, black people across the country were largely cut out of the legitimate home-mortgage market through means both legal and extralegal. Chicago whites employed every measure, from 'restrictive covenants' to bombings, to keep their neighborhoods segregated.

...and I think about living in a place that’s chock full of History and devoid of memory. I think about how it’s impossible for a nation to have a conscience if it doesn’t have a memory.

But no matter how good the beer, how many honors or awards, how innovative Goose Island would ever be again, someone deep in the crowd would always boo.

The situation was fast approaching that of 1863, when Chicago doctors labeled the prison an extermination camp.

Are you sure,” he asked the clerk, “that my replies haven’t been sidetracked somewhere? I have seen people taking letters away from here all day, and that bird there just walked off with a fistful.”The clerk grinned. “What you advertising for?” he asked.“A position,” replied Jimmy.“That’s the answer,” explained the clerk. “That fellow there was advertising for help.

As he emerged again and crossed through the dining-room he saw that Murray had regained consciousness and was sitting at a table wiping the blood from his face with a wet napkin. As Murray’s eyes fell upon his late antagonist he half rose from his chair and shook his fist at Jimmy.“I’ll get you for this, young feller!” he yelled. “I’ll get you yet, and don’t you forget it.”“You just had me,” Jimmy called back; “but it didn’t seem to make you very happy.