Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

“What keeps a poor child in Appalachia poor is not what keeps a poor child in Chicago poor—even if from a distance, the outcomes look the same. And what keeps an able-bodied black woman poor is not what keeps a disabled white man poor, even if the outcomes look the same.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“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.”
― Brian Doyle

“Think of Chicago as a piece of music, perhaps,â€� he continued. “In it you can hear the thousands of years of people living here and fishing and hunting, and then bullets and axes, and the whine of machinery, and the bellowing of cattle, and the shriek of railroads, and the thud of fists and staves and crowbars, and a hundred languages, a thousand dialects. And the murmur of the lake like a basso undertone. Ships and storms, snow and fire. To the north the vast dark forests, and everywhere else around the city rolling fields of farms, and all roads leading to Chicago, which rises from the plains like Oz, glowing with light and fire at night, drawing people to it from around the world. A roaring city, gunfire and applause and thunder. Gleaming but made of bone and stone. Bitter cold and melting hot and clotheslines hung in the alleys and porches like the webbing of countless spiders. A city without illusions but with vaulting imaginations and expectations. A city of burning energies on the shore of a huge northern sea. An American city, with all the violence and humor and grace and greed of this particular powerful adolescent country. Perhaps the American city—no other city in the nation is as big and central and grown up from the very soil. Chicago was never ruled by Spain or England or France or Russia or Texas, it shares no ocean with other countries, it is no mere regional captain, like Cincinnati or Nashville; it is itself, all brawn and greed and song, brilliant and venal, almost a small nation, sprawling and vulgar and foul and beautiful, cold and cruel and wonderful. Its music is the blues, of course. Sad and uplifting at once, elevating and haunting at the same time. You sing so that you do not weep. You have no choice but to sing. So you raise up your voice and sing of love and woe, and soon another voice joins in, and you sing together, for a while, for a time, perhaps a brief time, but perhaps not.â€�”
― Brian Doyle

“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.”
― Brian Doyle

“I finally let someone else in and now the weight of what happened to me isn’t so heavy to carry around.”
― Caterina Passarelli, The Power of Salvation

“If man is, or is searching to be, omnipotent, I am willing to accept Chicago’s gigantism; but I should like the opposite to be accepted as well: a city which would fit in the hollow of one’s hand.”
― Jean Genet

“Spike Lee was the voice depicting the ills of social issues. Joseph Strickland will depict the spiritual issues (or ills) from within. ("The Making of Dual Mania: Filmmaking Chicago Style," 2018)”
― Joseph Strickland, The Making of Dual Mania: Filmmaking Chicago Style

“...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.”
― Rayshauna Gray

“Are you sure,â€� 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.â€�
The clerk grinned. “What you advertising for?� he asked.
“A position,� replied Jimmy.
“That’s the answer,â€� explained the clerk. “That fellow there was advertising for help.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Efficiency Expert

“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,â€� Jimmy called back; “but it didn’t seem to make you very happy.”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Efficiency Expert

“I’ll bet you’re some looker when you’re dolled up!”
― Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Efficiency Expert

“Here is the difference between Dante, Milton, and me. They wrote about hell and never saw the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years.”
― Carl Sandburg

“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.”
― Josh Noel, Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, and How Craft Beer Became Big Business

“Sir Thomas frowned. "I am afraid that your nephew is prejudiced against that great country," he said to Lady Agatha. I have traveled all over it, in cars provided by the directors, who, in such matters, are extremely civil. I assure you that it is an education to visit it."

"But must we really see Chicago in order to be educated?" asked Mr. Erskine, plaintively. "I don't feel up to the journey.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“One thing I remember with amazement about Chicago is that everyone knew everything before it was splayed lurid and naked in public; you never saw a city so filled with knowing as Chicago then and probably now; but for all the sure knowledge that the mayor was a thief of epic proportion and the state senator on the take, the police commissioner a thug and the cardinal a man with a mistress, I do not remember that anyone was in the least resigned or cowed; it was more like you knew the score and worked around it, you assumed the worst but sought out and esteemed the best where you found it.”
― Brian Doyle

“So that Chicago, with shipping and steel and livestock, came to think of itself as a burly city, tough and muscular, with rough-and-tumble football and politics and literature. Today of course we are a city of offices and whirring computers and financial shenanigans, but our founding myths remain. I would guess not one in ten Chicagoans has ever seen a real fight where the antagonists are trying to slice each other’s throats, but we airily say we are a tough city, nor have they seen a pig or a soybean plant, but we proudly say we characterize and epitomize the rural values of middle America.”
― Brian Doyle

“Most tourists, having done some research on Chicago delicacies, order their Italian beef sandwiches "wet," meaning that a slosh of extra meat gravy is dumped over the beef once it is in the bread. They think it means they are in the know, much as they do when they order a Chicago hot dog and tell the seller to "drag it through the garden." Chicagoans, almost to a person, order their dogs simply with "everything" if they want the seven classic toppings, and their Italian beef "dipped," meaning that the whole sandwich, once assembled, is grasped gently between tongs and completely submerged briefly in the vat of jus. This results in a sandwich that isn't just moist, it's decadently squooshy, in a way that sends rivulets of salty meaty juice down your arm when you eat.
This is the sandwich that necessitated the invention of the Chicago Sandwich Stance, a method of eating with your elbows resting on your dining surface, leaning over to hopefully save shirtfronts and ties from a horrible meaty baptism. Dipped Italian beef sandwiches in Chicago require a full commitment. Once you start, you are all in till the last bit of slushy bread and shred of spicy beef is gone. It requires that beverages have straws and proximity. Because if you try to stop midway, to pop in a French fry, or pick up a cup, the whole thing will disintegrate before your very eyes. You can lean over to sip something as long as you don't let go of your grasp on the sandwich. Fries are saved for dessert.
Most people wouldn't suspect how good iced coffee would be with Italian beef and French fries, but it is genius. My personal genius. Bringing sweet and bitter and cold to the hot, salty umami bomb of the sandwich and the crispy fries- insanely good.”
― Stacey Ballis, Recipe for Disaster

“The camp lived up to expectations as warmly dressed guards forced them to undress outside the gate where they searched them for valuables and weapons. The captives stood for a long time in ice and show on that grim December 5, numb and shaking, while guards robbed them, according to Copley. Chicago had now received prisoners from most major battlefields of the Civil War, except Gettysburg and Antietem.”
― George Levy, To Die in Chicago: Confederate Prisoners at Camp Douglas, 1862-65

“Add the shortage of blankets, warm clothing, and vegetables, and the result was likely to be more suffering and more death than had occurred earlier. The war was not over for Hood's army as it came through the gates of Camp Douglas. Another struggle for survival was beginning, and the odds of success were no better in Chicago than at Franklin or Nashville.”
― George Levy, To Die in Chicago: Confederate Prisoners at Camp Douglas, 1862-65

“The situation was fast approaching that of 1863, when Chicago doctors labeled the prison an extermination camp.”
― George Levy, To Die in Chicago: Confederate Prisoners at Camp Douglas, 1862-65

“A very wise English lady, one who has much experience of life, once said that young Englishmen of good position are lured into marrying music hall dancers, a thing which occasionally happens to them, because they find these ladies more entertaining and exciting than girls of their own class. I do not know whether this is true or not, but if it is it helps to explain the attractiveness of American women. There is always a certain unexpectedness about them. They are always stimulating and agreeable. It is much more difficult to account for the attractiveness of the English man.”
― George A. Birmingham, From Dublin to Chicago; Some Notes on a Tour in America

“One of the problems with people in Chicago, she remembered, was that they were never lonely at the same time.”
― Lorrie Moore, Birds of America: Stories

“Times were good at Goose Island. They couldn't make enough beer! But they were also dire. They couldn't make enough beer.”
― Josh Noel, Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, and How Craft Beer Became Big Business

“Tim, playing ball with them [the Chicago mob] doesn’t mean you lost the game—it means you’re finally in the game.”
― Jennifer Samson, Piece of Work

“The Wow Factor in Chicago, IL provides the best photo booth rentals, bounce house rentals, arcade game rentals, event furniture, mini golf rentals and more. Whether you're planning a barmitzvah or batmitzvah, a school event, a corporate event, a church function or a backyard birthday party, we have you covered. We have a full line of arcade games, fun inflatable rentals, moonwalks in Chicago, carnival games, glow cotton candy machines and more.”
― The Wow Factor Chicago

“Apart from an early antipathy to capitalism, he had seen something of the evil effects of drink in big cities, and on his first visit to Chicago he had shocked the local Press by comparing the city to hell. Urged by the journalists to give himself more time to see the city before condemning it, he requested them to come back in three days. When they returned and asked him what his views now were, he lifted his hat and said solemnly: 'I apologise to hell.”
― Robert Bruce-Lockhart, Scotch: The Whisky of Scotland in Fact and Story

“We'd speak French like a bunch of high school kids from Chicago, but we'd at least speak French.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“It was Plank who gave the defense its name: the 46. Many fans assume it came from the on-field alignment of players, as with the 3-4 defense and the Cover 2. In fact, 46 means nothing more than we're coming hard, in the way of the man who wears that number, Doug Plank.”
― Rich Cohen, Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football

“She knew there was a big Chicago
far off, where all the trains ran.”
― Carl Sandburg

“Some people around here say that we're a Ferris wheel away from being somewhere.”
― Ryan Collins