Loving Chicago is like loving a woman with a broken nose.

Chicago is an October sort of city even in spring.

When we get more houses than we can live in, more cars than we can ride in, more food than we can eat ourselves, the only way of getting richer is by cutting off those who don't have enough.

Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.

Yet once you've come to be part of this particular patch, you'll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real.

A book, a true book, is the writer's confessional. For, whether he would have it so or not, he is betrayed, directly or indirectly, by his characters, into presenting publicly his innermost feelings.

Any writer who knows what he's doing isn't doing very much.

... Chicago divided your heart. Leaving you loving the joint for keeps. Yet knowing it never can love you.

For the masses who do the city's labor also keep the city's heart.

Watch for a wild boy of no particular clan, ready for anything, always armed. Prefers fighting to toil, drink to fighting, chasing women to booze or battle: may attempt all three concurrently.

To literary critics a book is assumed to be guilty until it proves itself innocent.

When we ground ourselves in the present moment, we spontaneously connect better with others. We become more responsive and less reactive, listening more deeply and speaking with greater clarity.

Hair on a man's chest is thought to denote strength. The gorilla is the most powerful of bipeds and has hair on every place on his body except for his chest.

I wish people were all trees and I think I could enjoy them then.

A party in the orange grove. The pain on Linden's face is immediate. I am unwavering. He has cost me more pain than I will ever be able to repay.

All life lessons are not learned at college,'she thought. Life teaches them everywhere.

Riches can be stolen-not richness.

That what's most relevant to you is whether and how you're doing something different from what everybody else is doing.

It was early evening when they walked outside, the sky the color of pink lemonade.

The novel should be understood as a structure built to accommodate the greatest possible amount of cool stuff.

If Pakistan NSA wants to come he is welcome. But talks will only be on terrorism. No scope for expansion of agenda.