“Here is the difference between Dante, Milton, and me. They wrote about hell and never saw the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years.”

“Chicago sounds rough to the maker of verse. One comfort we have — Cincinnati sounds worse.”

“One of the hallmarks of Chicago is that we do so many things in an original manner. What other city has made a river flow backwards? What other city makes traffic flow backwards?”

“I give you Chicago. It is not London and Harvard. It is not Paris and buttermilk. It is American in every chitling and sparerib. It is alive from snout to tail.”

“A newspaper is the lowest thing there is.”

“Maybe we can show government how to operate better as a result of better architecture. Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world,”

“Going to Chicago was like going out of the world.”

“No realistic, sane person goes around Chicago without protection.”

“Chicago is unique. It is the only completely corrupt city in America.”

“I have struck a city, a real city, and they call it Chicago. I urgently desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savages.”

“Perhaps the most typically American place in America.”

“The school system sucks.”

“Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It's the most theatrically corrupt.”

“It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with Chicago—she outgrows his prophecies faster than he can make them. She is always a novelty; for she is never the Chicago you saw when you passed through the last time.”

“I adore Chicago. It is the pulse of America.”