Chicago is an October sort of city even in spring.

I don't recommend being a bachelor, but it helps if you want to write.

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.

And money can't buy everything. For example: poverty.

Thinking of Poe, thinking of Mark Twain and Vachel Lindsay, thinking of Jack London and Tom Wolfe, one begins to feel there is almost no way of becoming a creative writer in America without being a loser.

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

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