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

I started reading the big histories and the small histories, the memoirs and so forth. At some point, I found the diary of William E. Dodd.

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

There's something so relentless and foul about Hitler and his people, and the way things progressed from year to year. It just got to me in the strangest way.

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

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

Chicago has disappointed her enemies and astonished the world