47 Chicago Quotes

Chicago, often referred to as the "Windy City," is a metropolis brimming with history, culture, and a unique character all its own. From its towering skyscrapers to its vibrant neighborhoods, Chicago has inspired countless artists, authors, and thinkers over the years. In this post, we've curated a collection of the top 47 Chicago quotes that capture the essence of this dynamic city. Whether you're a local, a visitor, or simply someone captivated by Chicago's charm, these quotes offer a glimpse into the spirit of a city that continues to leave a lasting impression on all who encounter it.

1. “... Chicago divided your heart. Leaving you loving the joint for keeps. Yet knowing it never can love you.” - Nelson Algren

2. “...a city that was to live by night after the wilderness had passed. A city that was to forge out of steel and blood-red neon its own peculiar wilderness.” - Nelson Algren

3. “Yet once you've come to be part of this particular patch, you'll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real.” - Nelson Algren

4. “Writer's block? I've heard of this. This is when a writer cannot write, yes? Then that person isn't a writer anymore. I'm sorry, but the job is getting up in the fucking morning and writing for a living.” - Warren Ellis

5. “Leave the fireworks for those who cast no spark of their own.” - Karen Abbott

6. “Big cities can have big hearts.” - Mary Elise Monsell

7. “It was so easy to disappear, so easy to deny knowledge, so very easy in the smoke and din to mask that something dark had taken root. This was Chicago, on the eve of the greatest fair in history.” - Erik Larson

8. “Let me tell your something. I'm from Chicago. I don't break.” - Barack Obama

9. “If it weren't for the Chicagos and Detroits and Toledos, the terrible things would spread out across the whole country and make trouble for everybody else. Such places were collectors of badness in the way hospitals were collectors of the sick and damaged.” - Stephen Dobyns

10. “It's the place built out of Man's ceaseless failure to overcome himself. Out of Man's endless war against himself we build our successes as well as our failures. Making it the city of all cities most like Man himself— loneliest creation of all this very old poor earth.” - Nelson Algren

11. “On the Rolling Stones - You will walk out of the Amphitheatre after watching the Stones perform and suddenly the Chicago stockyards smell clean and good by comparison.” - Tom Fitzpatrick

12. “So he bought tickets to the Greyhound and they climbed, painfully, inch by inch and with the knowledge that, once they reached the top, there would be one breath-taking moment when the car would tip precariously into space, over an incline six stories steep and then plunge, like a plunging plane. She buried her head against him, fearing to look at the park spread below. He forced himself to look: thousands of little people and hundreds of bright little stands, and over it all the coal-smoke pall of the river factories and railroad yards. He saw in that moment the whole dim-lit city on the last night of summer; the troubled streets that led to the abandoned beaches, the for-rent signs above overnight hotels and furnished basement rooms, moving trolleys and rising bridges: the cagework city, beneath a coalsmoke sky.” - Nelson Algren

13. “When I burn please bury me deepSomewhere on West Division StreetPut a bottle beneat' my head'n a bottle beneat' my feet” - Nelson Algren

14. “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.” - Nelson Algren

15. “I bet you think fellas are the ones to remember a girl -- don't you?"He shook his head hurriedly, that he'd always thought that."Fellas have all the fun 'n she just sees one right after another, so it seems like HE'D remember her, better 'n SHE'D remember him, only it works the other way around. I ain't forgot one single fella, all these years. But I bet there ain't TWO 'd know me from a big of bananas this minute.” - Nelson Algren

16. “Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning...proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.” - Carl Sandburg

17. “I often wonder what Einstein would have done in my position. At Peterson, I kept an Einstein poster in my room, the one that says 'Imagination is more important than knowledge.' Einstein was smart, maybe even as smart as Laserator, but he played it way too safe. Then again, nobody ever threw a grappling hook at Einstein. I like to think he would have enjoyed my work, if he could have seen it. But no one sees anything I do, not until it's hovering over Chicago.” - Austin Grossman

18. “Partying means drinking. It also means playing records by Lou Reed and Chicago, which I thought was a city but is also a band it turns out.” - Ron Currie Jr.

19. “It is wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago” - Dan Quayle

20. “I must confess a shameful secret: I love Chicago best in the cold.” - Erik Larson

21. “Chicago is an October sort of city even in spring.” - Nelson Algren

22. “Shortly before school started, I moved into a studio apartment on a quiet street near the bustle of the downtown in one of the most self-conscious bends of the world. The “Gold Coast” was a neighborhood that stretched five blocks along the lake in a sliver of land just south of Lincoln Park and north of River North. The streets were like fine necklaces and strung together were the brownstone houses and tall condominiums and tiny mansions like pearls, and when the day broke and the sun faded away, their lights burned like jewels shining gaudily in the night. The world’s most elegant bazaar, Michigan Avenue, jutted out from its eastern tip near The Drake Hotel and the timeless blue-green waters of Lake Michigan pressed its shores. The fractious make-up of the people that inhabited it, the flat squareness of its parks and the hint of the lake at the ends of its tree-lined streets squeezed together a domesticated cesspool of age and wealth and standing. It was a place one could readily dress up for an expensive dinner at one of the fashionable restaurants or have a drink miles high in the lounge of the looming John Hancock Building and five minutes later be out walking on the beach with pants cuffed and feet in the cool water at the lake’s edge.” - Daniel Amory

23. “There have been times I have thought some dreams should never be dreamt, but I would hate a world where that was true.” - Daniel Amory

24. “It was a generation growing in its disillusionment about the deepening recession and the backroom handshakes and greedy deals for private little pots of gold that created the largest financial meltdown since the Great Depression. As heirs to the throne, we all knew, of course, how bad the economy was, and our dreams, the ones we were told were all right to dream, were teetering gradually toward disintegration. However, on that night, everyone seemed physically at ease and exempt from life’s worries with final exams over and bar class a distant dream with a week before the first lecture, and as I looked around at the jubilant faces and loud voices, if you listened carefully enough you could almost hear the culmination of three years in the breath of the night gasp in an exultant sigh as if to say, “Law school was over at last!” - Daniel Amory

25. “Do you want to achieve something or do you just want to make money?” asked a nearby man in a white shirt to another man in a striped shirt. I waited for the answer as I slowly walked past them. “Why is it an either or question?” the man in the striped shirt finally murmured philosophically under a sip of beer. They both stood there looking at each other in thought.” - Daniel Amory

26. “Really, nobody was there?” I asked.“Well, nobody important,” he said, putting his glasses back on and blinking.” - Daniel Amory

27. “You know, sometimes I think this is just not it,” he said, his glasses flashing from the early night’s light. He turned toward me in a thoughtful pause.“You know what I mean, Tom?” he asked. “It’s just not.” - Daniel Amory

28. “The stars glittered in the sky and as the number of people at the party grew there were merging conversations and laughter and bodies moving in outlines around the kegs of beer in a curtsy of youth.” - Daniel Amory

29. “That weekend the city blushed with a great heat wave but on Monday it rained, cooling the ache in the street’s burn.” - Daniel Amory

30. “Don’t you think most of those kids think too much about who got an A or a B when they were in law school and what that means to an inflated G.P.A. and not enough about the world?” asked Connor irrelevantly.” - Daniel Amory

31. “Should I have a doughnut or my disgusting cardboard?” asked Gwynn, as she drew up languidly before me at a study table in a bookstore on State Street, raising a puffed rice cake in the air. My eyes narrowed attentively at her face, but as I hesitated, she announced eagerly, “Disgusting cardboard it is!” - Daniel Amory

32. “I’ve officially turned into a loser,” she whispered cynically. “I’m looking forward to going home and having cereal for dinner and walking Mitchell and studying a little and then going to sleep. I’ve had my ‘going out and having fun’ quota for the year, I guess, and it’s June.” - Daniel Amory

33. “This is so funny,” said Ellen, noticing the seating arrangement. “Isn’t this funny? Tom, come sit next to Robin. Griffin, sit next to Laura.” I stood up and sat next to Robin while Griffin brought his chair over to Laura. “That’s better,” said Ellen. “Isn’t that better?” - Daniel Amory

34. “She loves swimming,” said Ellen, who I knew had been a competitive swimmer in college. Ellen looked in the rearview mirror at Kara.“Don’t you Kara?” asked Ellen.There was no response. “I didn’t start until I was three,” said Ellen. “She’s got a two year start on me.” - Daniel Amory

35. “One of the professors told me last week that he feels bad teaching with the way the economy is now. ‘What’s the point?’ he said. ‘Kids aren’t getting jobs.’ You never hear faculty talk that way. He did.” - Daniel Amory

36. “Look, girls know when they’re cute,” he said. “You don’t have to tell them. All they need to do is look in the mirror. I have one friend out in New York, an attorney. She moved out there after the school year to take the bar. She doesn’t have a job. I was like, ‘How are you going to get a job there in this market?’ And she’s like, ‘I’ll wink and I’ll smile.’ She’s a pretty girl. Whether that works despite her poor grades is yet to be seen.” - Daniel Amory

37. “I don’t think I’ve ever referred to any girl I dated as my girlfriend. I think that would freak me out. Even the girl that I dated for two years in college I don’t think I ever referred to her as my girlfriend.”“How would you introduce her?” I asked.“I’m just going to say her name,” he said.” - Daniel Amory

38. “I remember when I was twenty-five,” he said. “No client comes to you when you’re twenty-five. It’s like when you are looking for a doctor. You don’t want the new one that just graduated. You don’t want the very old one, the one shaking, the one twenty years past his prime. You want the seasoned one who has done it so many times he can do it in his sleep though. Same thing with attorneys.” - Daniel Amory

39. “Well, if you’re a native Chicagoan, you know how dumb he [Dr. Robert Hartley] is. He gets on the Ravenswood El, he goes past his stop on Sheridan Road, he gets off in Evanston, where the El is on the ground, and then he walks back 55 blocks to his apartment. Now, would you want to have that man as a psychologist? A man who misses his stop every day?” - Bob Newhart

40. “A profound impression was created by the discourses of Professor GN Chakravarti and Mrs Besant, who is said to have risen to unusual heights of eloquence, so exhilarating were the influences of the gathering. Besides those who represented our society and religions, especially Vivekananda, VR Gandhi, Dharmapala, captivated the public, who had only heard of Indian people through the malicious reports of interested missionaries, and were now astounded to see before them and hear men who represented the ideal of spirituality and human perfectibility as taught in their respective sacred writings.” - Henry Olcott

41. “Chicago does not go to the world, the world comes to Chicago! Who needs New York? Who has taller buildings than our tall buildings? Who's got a busier airport than our airport? You want Picasso? We got Picasso, big Picasso. Nobody can make heads or tails of it. It's a lion? No, a seahorse. Looks to me like a radiator with wings. Who gives a damn, people, a Picasso's a Picasso.” - Peter Orner

42. “Jack: Well, I've never been to New York, but I hear it's for assholes. Odile: It's not.Jack: Well, that's what I heard. Cool people don't live there anymore, They all live here. In Chicago.” - Joe Meno

43. “كتب *ديستويفسكى* في احدى روايلاته ان كل اب فى الدنيا يكن كراهية عميقة لزوج ابنته مهما تظاهر بالعكس” - علاء الاسوانى

44. “I am stone and steel of your sleeping numbers;I remember all you forget.I will die as many timesas you make me over again.” - Carl Sandburg

45. “she knew what she wanted and it wasn't / me. / I know more women like that than any / other kind.” - Charles Bukowski

46. “Poor health was not just the result of random acts, bad luck, bad behavior or unfortunate genetics. Deliberate public policy decision about housing, education, parks and streets were the key drivers of racial differences in mortality. Crime kept people off the streets and limited their ability to exercise. The lack of grocery stores limited dietary choices. The lack of primary care doctors and specialists in these communities made chronic disease care more difficult. The degradation and loss of hospital services in these communities affected hospital-based outcomes. … The chronic underfunding of critical health services at Cook County Hospital and other safety-net providers contributed to these poor outcomes as well. The deleterious impact of social structures such as urban poverty and racism on health has been called 'structural violence.” - David A. Ansell

47. “Things are more like they are now...than they have EVER been before!” - Uncle Arnie Mamath