What is life? It departs covertly. Like a thief Death took him.

The last copy of the Chicago Daily News I picked up had three crime stories on its front page. But by comparison to the gaudy days, this is small-time stuff. Chicago is as full of crooks as a saw with teeth, but the era when they ruled the city is gone forever.

There are no generalizations in American politics that vested selfishness cannot cut through.

What is life? It departs covertly. Like a thief Death took him.

[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.

One travels like a golf ball, hopping from green to green.

Moscow is the city where if Marilyn Monroe should walk down the street with nothing on but shoes, people would stare at her feet first.