Utopic Chicago Quotes

I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, and in spite of what most people might have expected from a young girl growing up deaf, life for me was like one long episode of 'The Brady Bunch.' Despite whatever barriers were in my way, I imagined myself as Marcia Brady skating down the street saying 'hi' to everyone, whether they knew me or not. ~ Marlee Matlin

Partying means drinking. It also means playing records by Lou Reed and Chicago, which I thought was a city but is also a band it turns out. ~ Ron Currie Jr.

Winter came and the city [Chicago] turned monochrome
black trees against gray sky above white earth. Night now fell in midafternoon, especially when the snowstorms rolled in, boundless prairie storms that set the sky close to the ground, the city lights reflected against the clouds ~ Barack Obama

When I first started writing, I wrote a book called 'Bruiser,' and it was pretty much set in Chicago. ~ Richard House

Chicago kept industry, attracted new business, became the center for convention trade and transportation. ~ Jane Byrne

She knows she is in Chicago. But she does not yet realize that she is in Illinois. ~ Lydia Davis

Well, my piano's really beautiful. I actually have two pianos. I have a Yamaha upright from the '60s that's blond, wood, and black, and I also have one from the '20s from Chicago - not a well-known brand or anything. ~ Zooey Deschanel

The Chicago Cubs are like Rush Street-a lot of singles, but no action. ~ Joe Garagiola

That story is proof of the theorem that then as today in Chicago, the mysterious equation of whiskey plus music equals what can only be called happiness. ~ Sarah Vowell

I've called Chicago home for nearly 25 years. It's a city of broad shoulders and big hearts and bold dreams; a city of legendary sports figures, legendary sports venues, and legendary sports fans; a city like America itself, where the world
the world's races and religions and nationalities come together and reach for the dream that brought them here. ~ Barack Obama

His anger seemed out of proportion to the crime. Men. Give them an orgasm and they want ... well, probably more orgasms. ~ Kate Meader

I just wanted to see every single musical I could. The very first one I saw was 'Beauty and the Beast,' the only one I could get tickets for, and then 'Les Miserables' and then 'Chicago.' ~ America Ferrera

Chicago still remains a Mecca of the Midwest - people from both coasts are kind of amazed how good life is in Chicago, and what a good culture we've got. You can have a pretty wonderful artistic life and never leave Chicago. ~ Harold Ramis

It's very freaky in Chicago.There's something in the water there, I don't know what it is. But the actual word Chicago means, in the Indian language, garlic. It was just garlic and mosquitoes there.And that is the roughest city on the planet, and I been to every place in the world. ~ Quincy Jones

I live in a beautiful vintage building that was built in the heart of downtown Chicago. ~ Nate Berkus

Chicago has disappointed her enemies and astonished the world ~ Erik Larson

By accident, some traders had stumbled across a route controlled by Verizon that took 14.65 milliseconds. "The Gold Route," the traders called it, because on the occasions you happened to find yourself on it you were the first to exploit the discrepancies between prices in Chicago and prices in New York. ~ Michael Lewis

As a city, Chicago really affords me an environment that I am really happy creating in. It's an easy place to live in a lot of ways; it's a great community to be making music in. ~ Jason Molina

I moved to Chicago in 1992 to study improv and it was everything I wanted it to be. It was like a cult. People ate, slept, and definitely drank improv. They worked at crappy day jobs just to hand over their money for improv classes. Eager young people in khakis and polo shirts were willing to do whatever teachers like Del Close and Martin de Maat told them to. In retrospect, it may actually have been a cult. ~ Tina Fey

It is best if the guard is in love with America and wants to overawe the American by being a premium guard. This kind of guard thinks that he will encounter the American again one day in America, and that the American will offer to take him to a Chicago Bulls game, and buy him blue jeans and white
bread and delicate toilet paper. This guard dreams of speaking English
without an accent and obtaining a wife with an unmalleable bosom. This guard will confess that he does not love where he lives.
The other kind of guard is also in love with America, but he will hate the American for being an American. This is worst. This guard knows he will never go to America, and knows that he will never meet the American again. He will steal from the American, and terror the American, only to teach that he can. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

We were also in Chicago at the same time, and we agreed about our future. (This is back before we were married. The constant agreeing ends, like three minutes after the ceremony. Two if you're both Italian.) ~ Hillary Manton Lodge

In the immediate aftermath of the great Chicago fire, a business proprietor erected a shack in front of his burned-out business. On a sign, he placed his name and the tagline that everything was gone but wife, children, and energy. ~ H.W. Brands

Leave the orgasm, take the cannoli? ~ Kate Meader

The people of Chicago have made it very clear that they favor sensible restrictions on gun ownership. ~ Mike Quigley

Pluto is cold; Chicago in January is merely inconvenient. ~ Mark Blumberg

It was really interesting to be editing the film [Trust] in New York and directing the play in Chicago, and one definitely informed the other. The play probably benefitted more because I realized what scenes could be cut, and I cut those scenes from the play. ~ David Schwimmer

He meant business; I could hear it in his voice.
Marlboro Man was talking about Chicago, about my imminent move. I'd told him my plans the first time we'd ever spoken on the phone, and he'd mentioned it once or twice during our two wonderful weeks together. But the more time we'd spent together, the less it had come up. Leaving was the last thing I wanted to talk about while I was with him.
I couldn't respond. I had no idea what to say.
"You there?" Marlboro Man asked.
"Yeah," I said. "I'm here." That was all I could manage.
"Well…I just wanted to say good night," he said quietly.
"I'm glad you did," I replied. I was an idiot.
"Good night," he whispered.
"Good night."
I woke up the next morning with puffy, swollen eyes. I'd slept like a rock, having dreamed about Marlboro Man all night long. They'd been vivid dreams, crazy dreams, dreams of us talking and playing chess and shooting each other with Silly String. He'd already become such a permanent fixture in my consciousness, I dreamed about him nightly…effortlessly. ~ Ree Drummond

It would take me all night to tell about Old Bull Lee; let's just say now, he was a teacher, and it may be said that he had every right to teach because he spent all his time learning; and the things he learned were what he considered to be and called "the facts of life," which he learned, not only out of necessity but because he wanted to. He dragged his long, thin body around the entire United States and most of Europe and North Africa in his time, only to see what was going on.... there are pictures of him with the international cocaine set of the thirties - gangs with wild hair, leaning on one another, there are other pictures of him in a Panama hat, surveying the streets of Algiers.... He was an exterminator in Chicago, a bartender in New York, a summons-server in Newark. In Paris he sat at cafe tables, watching the sullen French faces go by. In Athens he looked up from his ouzo at what he called the ugliest people in the world. In Istanbul he threaded his way through crowds of opium addicts and rug-sellers, looking for the facts. In Chicago he planned to hold up a Turkish bath, hesitated just for two minutes too long for a drink, and, wound up with two dollars and had to make a run for it. He did all these things merely for the experience.... ~ Jack Kerouac

You feel like an ant contemplating Chicago. ~ Robert Fulghum

That the American police can perjure themselves with the same ease, that they are just as merciless, just as brutal and cunning as their European colleagues, has been proven on more than one occasion. We need only recall the tragedy of the eleventh of November, 1887, known as the Haymarket Riot. No one who is at all familiar with the case can possibly doubt that the Anarchists, judicially murdered in Chicago, died as victims of a lying, bloodthirsty press and of a cruel police conspiracy. Has not Judge Gary himself said: Not because you have caused the Haymarket bomb, but because you are Anarchists, you are on trial. ~ Emma Goldman