When I was a kid, my father brought home the autobiography of Sid Luckman, the great Chicago Bears quarterback – probably an extra copy from the sports department where he worked. It was the first sports biography I ever read.
The overwhelming number of police officers in Chicago are doing good work under difficult conditions. They put their lives on the line every day in situations none of us can fully comprehend or appreciate.
Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It’s the most theatrically corrupt.
Chicago is constantly auditioning for the world, determined that one day, on the streets of Barcelona, in Berlin’s cabarets, in the coffee shops of Istanbul, people will know and love us in our multidimensional glory, dream of us the way they dream of San Francisco and New York.
I went to, you know, a church in Chicago, and my mom, of course, was in the choir because my mom was a singer; she used to sing. I wanted to be in the choir as well, and I was like, ‘Mom, please, you know, I want to sing in the choir with you guys.’ I kept on asking her, and finally I was, you know, in the choir.
People drive everywhere in L.A., so you get very little human interaction… but N.Y. and Chicago are like London… L.A. lacks the social interaction.
In Chicago, we have a century-old transit system that desperately needs updates to keep up with increased capacity.
I was born in Chicago, but I was raised in a town called Jackson, Tennessee. And a lot of these changes that were necessary and talked about it as important have been made, like, people go to school where they want to go. They work for equal pay, they work for – they can go school and have an equal shot at a job.
I been living down in Atlanta, but everyone back home has been in my thoughts, especially those doing something for the community and all the neighborhood heroes. I thought about all the first responders putting their lives on the line to help out and it inspired me, so I took a jet back to Chicago to show my thanks.
I am a Chicagoan. I feel like I’ve simply been on vacation for 10 years in Los Angeles. But Chicago is a real place, and L.A. is a motel.
The good thing I will say about the Chicago School is that it was always about the world, not about the abstract.
When I met Michael Jordan on a basketball court at an athletic club – we hooped together in Chicago – he came to me and asked me if I wanted to do a song for his upcoming movie. I was like, ‘Yeah!’ I didn’t even ask what it was.
I’m a blue-collar Chicago girl raised on wonderful movies my mom took us to, ones that had a lot of heart.
I went down to Chicago to try to go into a place called Second City. I auditioned for that and got in pretty quickly, but I couldn’t stop partying. They gave me a warning: ‘If you do it again, we’re gonna kick you off the main stage.’
I think people look at dance music and see it as kind of a bad thing, and bad people hang out in nightclubs, but it never felt that way for me. Growing up in Chicago, music was the thing that saved me, that kept me on the straight and narrow.
I never thought I would see the outside of Chicago.
After going to theater school, and then subsequently dropping out, I would say that when I first went to Chicago and learned long-form improv, that was a far better acting workshop than any acting school I’ve been to.
I’ve always wanted to write a book relating my experiences growing up as a deaf child in Chicago. Contrary to what people might think, it wasn’t all about hearing aids and speech classes or frustrations.
Chicago is an exciting place which renews itself. The workshop system encourages close reading and frank discussions of papers and ideas.
I love Chicago for several reasons, but one of the best is that I was so intrigued that you have wild rabbits running around in the city. I never had seen bunnies in such a large urban environment before.
The Chicago Economics Department was in intellectual ferment, although the central issues of the 1930’s were very different from those in later times. I had never before encountered minds of that quality at close quarters and they influenced me strongly.
Chicago always hit me as such a gloomy place – I just remember all the snow getting dirty as soon as it would fall, all the decaying brown brick buildings around where we lived, all this soot all over the place.
I’m a trained fine artist. I went to art school from the time I was 5 years old. I was, like, a prodigy out of Chicago. I’d been in national competitions from the age of 14.
I do feel strongly that we have got to do a little brand-positioning work. Wouldn’t it be great to have something that everybody could say: ‘Yep, that’s Chicago.’
Death can happen anywhere, but kids in Chicago, like 4 years old, can get shot. You don’t really hear that in too many places.
Having someone from Washington, California, or Chicago come in as a verifier, it shows the Hispanic community that Hispanic leaders support me.
I love playing in Chicago, and the fans have been great to me.
I decided I would go to Chicago and try my luck as a writer after those eight months as a fireman.
I grew up in Chicago, and I understand what Michael Jordan symbolizes.
I always thought moving to New York would mean starting over in theater, because I had great work in Chicago and didn’t want to become a waitress here.
When I was a kid, I lived in a poor part of Chicago, and I remember my brother and me using towels as capes. My son does it, too.
It was Muddy Waters who took the Delta blues north to Chicago, electrified the sound, and changed the course of popular music as we know it. That’s pretty much the judgment of history, and it is mine as well.
I like New York. I like Philly. I like San Fran. I like when people are stoked. But Chicago’s a real music town, and they’re really good to us there. There’s just something in the air there; people are just really stoked about music. Every time I go there, I have a great time, and the fandom is really heartwarming.
Mahalia Jackson, I grew up around the corner from in Chicago.
Chicago was where I realized that improv is its own thing, its own art form. And through that, you kind of develop a work ethic of not selling it short.
I had been a basketball fan growing up, and I felt that if we brought in the proper coach, and we played basketball the old fashioned way – where defense is paramount and offense involved movement off the ball and movement of the ball – we could build a winning team, and Chicago would respond to that.
The Chicago Special Olympics prove a very fundamental fact, the fact that exceptional children – children with mental retardation – can be exceptional athletes, the fact that through sports they can realize their potential for growth.
I’ve been proud to be a lifelong Chicago Cub and still be with the Cubs. That’s always been important to me and I think it’s always been special.
The Midwest isn’t somewhere you mix with those from the performing arts. But my mum and dad would go off to Chicago every so often to see shows. They would bring back the albums and the movies, those little eight metres, and we would all watch. I think that was when I fell in love with acting.
My culture-deprived, aspirational mother dragged me once a month from our northern suburb – where the word art never came up – to the Art Institute of Chicago. I hated it.
I was in my early twenties. I was 22-ish. I graduated from college and went right into teaching. The first year, I taught in Indiana at a couple schools, and then I moved over to Chicago.
When the government picked companies and gave them monopoly rights to frequencies in San Francisco and Los Angeles and New York and Chicago, it was picking the winners of the competition; it wasn’t setting the terms of the competition.
My definition of a ‘friend’ is, coming from Chicago, someone who says, ‘Yeah, sure. You know what? Let’s talk about what we can talk about. Let’s help each other out. Your politics are none of my business.’
I’m a dirt road out in the country kind of person, but I remember thinking, I could live in Chicago.
In Chicago, you have an absence of strong family units, and that absence gets filled by gangs. You have a failure in the school system, after-school programs and other social programs to help keep kids off the streets. Amnesty International speaks to that in some way, by keeping these issues in the forefront.
I’m proud to say I had a bet with a guy from Chicago who said Chicago is windier and colder than Wyoming. Wyoming dominated them.
The only way to clean up Chicago is to get rid of Capone.
I want to live and work in Chicago for the rest of my life. You know when you were growing up and you wanted to become president? What I want now is to be mayor of this damned town in ten years.
With a rich history, a world-class interdisciplinary program, and a vibrant student experience, I can’t think of a better location to continue my own lifelong learning than the University of Chicago.
I live in Chicago but own some property up in Wisconsin.
I have a band called M&O. We were working on our first album in 2011 or 2012. We were looking for people to collaborate with, and I met Chance through a Young Chicago Authors poetry slam.
My family background is Mexican, and I was born in Chicago. It’s pretty much family tradition every time we get together for Christmas and major holidays to sing. Our family time is centered around the food and a little bit of performing for one another.
