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

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

The devil lives in a double-shot", Roman explains himself obscurely. "I got a great worm inside. Gnaws and gnaws. Every day I drown him and every day he gnaws. Help me drown the worm, fellas.

The great trains howling from track to track all night. The taut and telegraphic murmur of ten thousand city wires, drawn most cruelly against a city sky. The rush of city waters, beneath the city streets. The passionate passing of the night's last El.

And never, ever, no matter what else you do in your whole life, never sleep with anyone whose troubles are worse than your own.

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

Our myths are so many, our vision so dim, our self-deception so deep and our smugness so gross that scarcely any way now remains of reporting the American Century except from behind the billboards.