Best 404 quotes in «chicago quotes» category

There seems to be a different Chicago around every street corner, behind every bar, and within every apartment, two-flat, cottage, or bungalow. City of immigrants or city of heartless plutocrats, say what you will, Chicago almost defies interpretation. In many ways Chicago is like a snake that sheds its skin every thirty years or so and puts on a new coat to conform to a new reality.

The rig began shaking like caffeine withdrawal." --Opening sentence of THE FURY. "The duct-taped Buick swam north on Rush Street, hunting whores like a lesser white shark." --First sentence of Chapter One, THE FURY

The stars glittered in the sky and as the number of people at the party grew there were merging conversations and laughter and bodies moving in outlines around the kegs of beer in a curtsy of youth.

Think of Chicago as a piece of music, perhaps,” 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.…

They’re a slow-moving lot, reporters. Slothlike. Weighed down by all that righteous indignation about the freedom of the press and the public’s right to know, not to mention the liquid lunches they see as their constant due. Go out now and you’re playing right into their grasping, ink-stained hands.” He cocked an ear to the door. “I’m doing my best to protect your reputation here. It wouldn’t do to have a serving wench caught in a compromising position with the lord of the manor.” “You don’t have the cleavage to make a good serving wench, Eli.

Things are more like they are now...than they have EVER been before!

Tim, playing ball with them [the Chicago mob] doesn’t mean you lost the game—it means you’re finally in the game.

Times were good at Goose Island. They couldn't make enough beer! But they were also dire. They couldn't make enough beer.

This is so funny,” said Ellen, noticing the seating arrangement. “Isn’t this funny? Tom, come sit next to Robin. Griffin, sit next to Laura.” I stood up and sat next to Robin while Griffin brought his chair over to Laura. “That’s better,” said Ellen. “Isn’t that better?

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

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

Watching him walk over, Alex mused that Eli Cooper was the sort of man who knew how to use his physicality. Beneath his handmade shirts and tailored suits, a street fighter hummed through every loose-limbed motion. But that impression did not extend to his face, which was structurally perfect. Skyscraper-high cheekbones. Superhero jaw. A mouth that should have a government warning. There were no signs of past trouble with a jealous husband or an abandoned girlfriend. No one had ever broken his nose. No one had busted his lip. Strange, because her first instinct on seeing him was to roundhouse kick him into the next millennium.

We'd speak French like a bunch of high school kids from Chicago, but we'd at least speak French.

What are you thinking?” he asked in a disarmingly gentle tone. “That the city looks different depending on whom I’m seeing it with.” He nodded easily, as if this same thought had occurred to him. “I notice different things,” I continued. “Like with you, I pay more attention to the details of the buildings – the textures, the colors, the people standing in front of them. The reflections are different.” “Reflections?” he asked quietly. “They are.” I watched our bodies morph and distort in the window of an empty bank. “You’re there,” I said. “That’s how they’re different.

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.

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.

You should seriously get a job planning dates for The Bachelor.

When you buy from an independent, locally owned business, as opposed to nationally owned businesses, you strengthen the economic base of our city. And of course there’s no doubt that you’ll receive a better quality product or service. I share John Roeser’s amazement that people today tend to prefer saving a dollar or too two on a birthday cake, for example, by purchasing a sub-par cake made with artificial, cheap ingredients from a mass retailer, when Roeser’s Bakery offers some of the most delectable, housemade cakes in the world. How could anyone step into a fast food joint when we live in a city that has Lem’s barbecque rib tips, Kurowski’s kielbasa, Manny’s matzo ball soup, and Lindy’s chili within reach? You can’t even compare the products and services of the businesses featured in this book with those of mass retailers, either: Jjust try putting an Optimo hat on your head—you’ll ooze with elegance. Burn a beeswax lambathe from Athenian Candle and watch it glow longer than any candle you’ve ever lit. Bite into an Andersonville coffeecake from the Swedish Bakery—and you’ll have a hard time returning to the artificial ingredient– laden cakes found at most grocers. Equally important, local, family- owned businesses keep our city unique. In our increasingly homogenized and globalized world, cities that hold on tightly to their family-owned, distinctive businesses are more likely to attract visitors, entrepreneurs, and new investment. Chicago just wouldn’t be Chicago without these historic, one-of-a-kind places, and the people that run them from behind the scenes with nothing but love, hard work, and pride.

You know, sometimes I think this is just not it,” he said, his glasses flashing from the early night’s light. He turned toward me in a thoughtful pause. “You know what I mean, Tom?” he asked. “It’s just not.

When I burn please bury me deep Somewhere on West Division Street Put a bottle beneat' my head 'n a bottle beneat' my feet

Who needs the fairy tale when crazy, messy, sexy reality with the woman I adore is a million times better?

A 60-story tower in New York evokes a 70-story tower in Chicago [and] a 60-story tower in New York evokes a 70-story tower directly across the street.

All the Chicago demonstrators wanted to do was to sleep in the park and kick policemen with razor blades in their shoes.

Afghanistan is not like what's happening in Chicago. People are being shot left and right.

At Chicago Hope they have a technical staff that works real hard to make that O.R. as realistic as possible.

All the strands of my life came together and I really became a man when I moved to Chicago.

An amusing city, Chicago, any way you look at it. I'm afraid we are in for the time of our lives.

An Associated Press report by Chicago-based reporter Sharon Cohen in May 1993 examined Christian fundamentalists and concluded that they were prone to 'riots, terrorism - and death.'

As an early-and-often chronicler of Chicago-on-the-Potomac, I am amazed at the stubborn and clingy persistence of President Barack Obama's snowblowers in the media. See no scandal, hear no scandal, speak no scandal.

A tall young man sped swiftly up the wide stone steps leading to the doorway of a mansion in one of Chicago's most fashionable avenues.

And then when I went to Chicago, that's when I had these outer space experiences and went to the other planets.

Asking Europe to disarm is like asking a man in Chicago to give up his life insurance.

As much as I want to stay on the team -- I love Chicago, I love the Bulls -- at the same time, I know the business part of it. Sooner or later, all the rumors are going to come up.

Because I grew up in Chicago, I didn't have an emotional relationship to segregation. I understood the facts and stories, but there was not an emotional relationship.

Back in Chicago, all we cared about was rock 'n' roll and staying out of the army.

Be assured that I did not become the Mayor of Chicago to preside over its decline.

Barack Obama was a black man that lived on the South Side of Chicago, who had his share of troubles catching cabs.

Because Chicago was to radio what Hollywood was to films and Broadway was to the theatre: it was the hub of radio.

[Chicago] is the greatest and most typically American of all cities. New York is bigger and more spectacular and can outmatch it in other superlatives, but it is a "world" city, more European in some respects than American.

But I like being nasty. I like being cranky. Especially if it's a cold day in Chicago, it's nice to just take it out on Kyle, because he's so easy to scream at, you know?

But when you look - and Chicago's not the only - you go to Ferguson, you go to so many different places. You need better relationships. I agree with Secretary [Hillary] Clinton on this.

Celebrities in general are pretty democratic, just being in the theater. Plus, I'm from Chicago. But Obama's sensible... he's just a reasonable, sensible human being.

Chicago '68 was a relatively small demonstration for its time, but I've talked to millions of people who claim they were there because it felt like we were all there. Everyone from our generation was there and was at Woodstock.

Chicago Cubs fans are ninety percent scar tissue.

Chicago has been characterized as the most segregated city in the United States, a city they said could never change.

Chicago is like a warzone. Chicago is worse than some of the people that you report, in some of the places that you report about every night, in the Middle East.

Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It's the most theatrically corrupt.

Chicago is unique. It is the only completely corrupt city in America.

Chicago's buoy was a couple of hundred yards astern of Arizona, and I was saddened to look at her.

Chicago's like Melbourne - there's a city center, there's public transport, and there's more of a cultural scene.