Literature is made upon any occasion that a challenge is put to the legal apparatus by conscience in touch with humanity.

The only way I could finish a book and get a plot was just to keep making it longer until something happens.

(Chicago is) the only major city in the country where you can easily buy your way out of a murder rap.

Never lie down with a woman who's got more troubles than you.

It is strange how fragile this man-creature is.....in one second he's just garbage. Garbage, that's all.

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.

...he said, with sort of a little derisive smile, "How can you walk down the street with all this stuff going on inside you?" I said, "I don't know how you can walk down the street with nothing going on inside you.