I grew up on the south side of Chicago, most of that time on welfare. My mother and sister and I used to live with my grandparents and various cousins. We shared a two-bedroom tenement, and the three of us slept in one of those bedrooms and had a set of bunk beds.
In 1980, I moved to Chicago, and I recorded demo tapes for my friends’ bands, and in 1981, the first Big Black record – the first thing I did that was an actual record.
One thing I carried my whole life, especially from my grandparents in Chicago, was a huge idealism for the world.
Chicago is old stomping grounds for me.
When I moved to Chicago, I was coming from a school that didn’t have any arts in Alabama. I essentially came from a town where the arts didn’t exist and the desire for education didn’t exist and wasn’t valued.
Everybody would love to be mayor of Chicago. If you look at what we have done over many, many years and where we are today and the commitment by the business community, the commitment by the not-for-profit community – all this coming together – this is a wonderful city.
Chicago is a wonderful, vibrant city with wonderful food cultures to it, wonderful talent downtown.
I just want to play well, have the people in Chicago enjoy watching soccer. You have a very good baseball team, a very good ice hockey team, and a very good football team. Hopefully you’ll have a very good soccer team.
I grew up on the Southside of Chicago. What people don’t realize is that my father was a multimillionaire who owned 12 hotels, motels, a steel mill, a radio station, a club, nursing home, and a law office. So I think it’s safe to say I’m a little above middle class and I’m a daddy’s girl.
It wasn’t until I left that I realised it’s not weird to grow up in certain cities and, by the age of 27 or 28, for all of your friends to still be alive. I can think of a lot of kids that I knew in Chicago who were supposed to grow up but didn’t.
I make no promises every book will be about Chicago, but it’s so inspiring. It’s a city of such contradictions. I love to write about it.
I liked playing in Chicago, and I gave them everything I had, but I knew in my heart I was a Red Wing.
In the evenings I studied chemistry at the University of Chicago, the weekends I helped in the family store.
I pledge tonight to be Mayor for all of the people of this city – for one Chicago.
I want to do ‘Chicago P.D.’ for as long as it’s on the air. I love the show; I love the Dick Wolf family. I think he’s created something genius with the crossovers and having everyone on these shows inhabit the same universe as far as ‘Chicago Med’ and ‘Chicago Fire’ and ‘Chicago P.D.’
I loved theater growing up, and my mom always took us to the touring productions that would come through town. We would go to Chicago all the time and see shows. I loved it.
In Chicago it’s really a case of the play’s the thing – people are just so happy to be acting, you know? We were all actors – not like in New York or Los Angeles, where everyone says they are actors but they are actually waiting tables and hustling for spots in commercials.
Any conductor who tells you that if he is approached for the directorship of the Chicago Symphony that he’s not interested in it, you know perfectly well he’s lying.
I had the chance to visit all 56 counties in Montana in my pickup. You can put Washington, D.C., in one corner of our state and put Chicago in the other corner, and that’s the size of my congressional district.
I come from Chicago, and the landscape of the Midwest has always meant a great deal to me.
I think it’s so dope that I’m here in Chicago and contributing to the music scene that’s thriving. People are so happy Chicago’s shining that everyone is willing to say ‘I represent Chicago.’ That wasn’t always the case.
It just so happens that I was born and raised in Washington. Had I been born in Chicago or San Antonio, the streets and places would have figured into whatever I wrote. Just so happens that it’s Washington, D.C.
I became the storyteller of South Side Chicago. I used an old Kiwi liquid shoe polish as a microphone. I’d go around the house interviewing everybody, telling stupid jokes, doing voices. I mimicked Sidney Poitier, Sammy Davis Jr., people on ‘Laugh-In,’ Flip Wilson.
We could see the Teamsters coming in from New Jersey, the AFL-CIO from Chicago. You could see all of the people being bused in.
Dancing is my number one love. That was my first goal as a child. I would love to do stage, maybe do Chicago. I love being in front of an audience. It’s so stimulating. I also love to barbecue.
When I was in Chicago, I was working as a carpenter while I was doing plays. I thought it’d be a fun set construction job, but it turned up to just be a straight-up factory.
I had a little epiphany when I was a writer at ‘Chicago’ magazine. I sat down to dinner at the Ritz-Carlton. Somebody poured a white dessert wine with chocolate cake. It was a wine I would never have expected to make sense. The idea of any wine tasting fabulous with chocolate cake was fascinating to me.
I know Los Angeles has it better than Chicago when it comes to produce year round!
If there was ever a true emotion of a Chicago Bull, Derrick Rose embodies it. Because he is Chicago. That kid will do anything for the city of Chicago.
Every player should be accorded the privilege of at least one season with the Chicago Cubs. That’s baseball as it should be played – in God’s own sunshine. And that’s really living.
I have a place in Chicago and I get there as much as I can… The city is so unbelievably beautiful. It’s one of the greatest cities on the planet. My heart beats differently when I’m in Chicago. It slows down and I feel more at ease.
I moved to Chicago and I did theater, and then I started writing and I stop acting and I did sketch. You know, I did all of the things that, if you were serious about doing television, don’t do.
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.
I began acting on stage when I was 7 years old. My first role was as Dorothy in ‘The Wizard of Oz’ at Chicago’s Center on Deafness in Northbrook, Illinois.
By the time I was 14, my most burning ambition was to leave my home, leave my neighborhood, leave my city. I kept it a secret wish. It was easier done than said. It wasn’t only that I wanted to leave Chicago – I wanted to live in New York City. And I did – for a time.
I’ve been lucky to conduct the very best orchestras in the world: New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Berlin, the London Philharmonic.
Chicago is a world-class culinary center. We need to guard that reputation and status.
I was 10 years old, and I went to the Marigold Arena in Chicago, and I was hooked, just like that.
Chicago is a sort of journalistic Yellowstone Park, offering haven to a last herd of fantastic bravos.
Whether it’s on the streets of Philadelphia or New York or Chicago or Atlanta or in a classroom in Newtown, Connecticut, people want to be safe.
I had, like, two goals in my career: One was to try to get into ‘Second City.’ When I moved to Chicago, my goal was to try to work at ‘Second City.’ And beyond that, my goal was to make enough money as an actor to not do anything else but act, not have to go and wait tables again.
I was born in Chicago. I moved to Detroit until I was six and moved to Oakland at that point. And then we had a couple years in Stockton and Pasadena. And by the time I was 13, I was back in Oakland.
We grew up in a middle-class family in Chicago. Even when we went on vacation as a family, it wasn’t a really fun time, because my father didn’t want to spend any money when we got there.
I grew up in a Southside suburb of Chicago. It was idyllic. But I was plunked into a family that was not artistic and didn’t know how to deal with my emotions.
When you talk about the American League, you think of Fenway. When you talk about the National League, you think of Wrigley and the fan base that they have in Chicago.
I wrote my first novel and my second novel in Chicago. It was the place where I became a writer. It’s my favorite city.
‘Monty Python’ became my religion when I was 10. It led me out of the depths of darkness. I loved ‘The Goodies,’ too, and ‘The Two Ronnies.’ I watched those shows on the public television station in Chicago.
I look forward to going to Chicago because it’s where I grew up, and the food there is so munch. Especially during the winter, I get deep dish pizza or Italian beef, and it warms me up. It’s something I don’t normally get, especially here in L.A. where you’re always trying to be healthy.
In most places in the country, voting is looked upon as a right and a duty, but in Chicago it’s a sport.
What brought me to L.A. was work! I moved to Chicago after college – I went to Kalamazoo – did my nerd thing, graduated, and moved to Chicago to pursue improv.
I’m just a Chicago actor who’s a playwright. Even with the success of ‘August,’ the people in town who come to our theater know me by sight, because they’ve seen me onstage so much.
And I come here as a daughter, raised on the South Side of Chicago – by a father who was a blue-collar city worker and a mother who stayed at home with my brother and me.
The show can go on without me, and probably will, but I want to come back to act in Chicago. My wife and I just bought a condo downtown, and I want to do theater.
