Beneath the stars the lake lay dark and sombre," Stead wrote, "but on its shores gleamed and glowed in golden radiance the ivory city, beautiful as a poet's dream, silent as a city of the dead.

His weakness was his belief that evil had boundaries.

I was born with the devil in me,' [Holmes] wrote. 'I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing.

Time lost can never be recovered...and this should be written in flaming letters everywhere.

I thought I'd go to a bookstore and see what moved me.

It was so easy to disappear, so easy to deny knowledge, so very easy in the smoke and din to mask that something dark had taken root. This was Chicago, on the eve of the greatest fair in history.

I must confess a shameful secret: I love Chicago best in the cold.

Chicago has disappointed her enemies and astonished the world

Leaves hung in the stillness like hands of the newly dead.

. . . why some men choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow.

I'm very perverse. If someone tells me I have to read a book, I'm instantly disinclined to do so.

Consciousness cannot be glimpsed as though it were something outside yourself, because it is you.

The richest person in the cemetery is the one who left the most happy memories.

Nothing can age a dragon, but you just might be the exception.

Men are free to decide their own moral choices, but they are also under the necessity to account to God for those choices.

My music is rock. I listen to Red Hot Chili Peppers and I listen to one of my songs, and if I don't give you the same emotion, then I go back and re-spit.

The first thing, the main thing, about how I work is I need to understand the character.

I loved books; I read my childhood away. I was more interested in my interior world.

It was almost as if I had a right to win. Thinking like that often seems to turn into sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

A labor of love always pays off.

Jazz is like wine. When it is new it's only for the experts, but when it gets older everybody wants it.