Chicago Quotes

“The coolest most amazing people I have met in my life, I said, are the ones who are not very interested in power or money, but who are very interested in laughter and courage and grace under duress and holding hands against the darkness, and finding new ways to solve old problems, and being attentive and tender and kind to every sort of being, especially dogs and birds, and of course children.”
― Brian Doyle, Chicago

“Life is a verb, life swerves and lurches no matter how cautious and careful your driving.”
― Brian Doyle, Chicago

“Maturity turns out to be a question you can never answer with confidence, despite advanced age and wage.”
― Brian Doyle , Chicago

“Chicago was never ruled by Spain or England or France or Russia or Texas, it shares no ocean with other countries, it is no mere regional captain, like Cincinnati or Nashville; it is itself, all brawn and greed and song, brilliant and venal, almost a small nation, sprawling and vulgar and foul and beautiful, cold and cruel and wonderful.”
― Brian Doyle, Chicago

“You cannot edit your life, and even if I was today offered the chance to never meet her, and so not leave the city I loved, I would decline, for life is a verb, life swerves and lurches no matter how cautious and careful your driving, and I would not be who I am, surrounded by those I love most in this world, had I not left Chicago when”
― Brian Doyle, Chicago

“I was even then beginning to sense that stories were the true seeds of relationships, and that romance and friendship were as much a matter of shared stories as pheromones, or overlapping interests.”
― Brian Doyle, Chicago

“stories are what we are, what we are made of, and if we don’t share good stories, then we will drown in poor stories, thin and shallow ones, stories told by people who only want power or money, and there is so much more in life than power or money. The coolest most amazing people I have met in my life, I said, are the ones who are not very interested in power or money, but who are very interested in laughter and courage and grace under duress and”
― Brian Doyle, Chicago

“but for all the sure knowledge that the mayor was a thief of epic proportion and the state senator on the take, the police commissioner a thug and the cardinal a man with a mistress, I do not remember that anyone was in the least resigned or cowed; it was more like you knew the score and worked around it, you assumed the worst but sought out and esteemed the best where you found it; and that was, as far as I could tell, on your street, in your neighborhood, among the shopkeepers and cops and nuns and bus drivers and carpenters and teachers who composed the small vibrant villages that collectively were the real Chicago.”
― Brian Doyle, Chicago

“Not timid, exactly, but careful. Judicious. In many ways this has been a good thing. I have not hurt anyone with reckless and careless and selfish behavior, that I know of. But I have perhaps been too … careful. For a long time I thought this was a virtue in a careless world but maybe it was more like a polite vice.”
― Brian Doyle, Chicago

“Schaumburg was a town north and west of Chicago, and Mr Mahoney liked to say that he had been there once, to carry away the few hereditary possessions of his beloved in a rickety old truck, along with his beloved herself, and he did not see that there would ever be an occasion for him to be there again, if God was merciful.”
― Brian Doyle, Chicago