People From Chicago

"...the function of a good visual environment may not be simply to facilitate routine trips, nor to support meanings and feelings already possessed. Quite as important may be its role as a guide and a stimulus for new exploration."

"In a complex society, there are may interrelations to be mastered...If an environment has strong visible framework and highly characteristic parts, then exploration of new sectors is both easier and more inviting."

"Concepts of size may depend in part on how well a structure can be grasped."

"It is taken for granted that in actual design form should be used to reinforce meaning, and not to negative it."

"Any existing, functioning urban area has structure and identity, even if only in weak measure...A frequent problem is the sensitive reshaping of an already existing environment: discovering and preserving its strong images, solving its perceptual difficulties, and, above all, drawing out the structure and identity latent in the confusion."

"The remote past is different, since it does not threaten the present."

"...a distinctive and legible environment not only offers security but also heightens the potential depth and intensity of human experience."

"...different observers will all find perceptual material which is congenial to their own particular way of looking at the world. While one man may recognize a street by its brick pavement, another will remember its sweeping curve, and a third will have located the minor landmarks along its length."

"Accumulated literary associations add depth to the experience; place names become pegs for layers of commentaries, as in the Chinese culture. But at base the emotional pleasure is a heightened sense of the flow of time."

"Leisure is now possible for many , and customs of timing are more obvious and less absolute. Time has become both more valuable and also more subject to reallocation."

"...education in seeing will be quite important as the reshaping of what is seen. Indeed, they together form a circular, or hopefully a spiral, process: visual education impelling the citizen to act upon his visual world, and this action causing him to see even more acutely. A highly developed art of urban design is linked to the creation of a critical and attentive audience. If art and audience grow together, then our cities will be a source of daily enjoyment to millions of their inhabitants."

"“An environment that facilitates recalling and learning is a way of linking the living moment to a wide span of time. Being alive is being awake in the present, secure in our ability to continue but alert to the new things that come streaming by. We feel our own rhythm, and feel also that it is part of the rhythm of the world. It is when local time, local place, and our own selves are secure that we are ready to face challenge, complexity, vast space, and the enormous future.”"

"Choosing a past helps us to construct a future."

"If we examine the feelings that accompany daily life, we find that historic monuments occupy a small place."

"There must also be some random accumulations to enable us to discover unexpected relationships. But serendipity is possible only when recollection is essentially a holding fast to what is meaningful and a release of what is not."

"To attempt to preserve all of the past would be life-denying."

"An environment that cannot be changed invites its own destruction."

"We prefer a world that can be modified progressively, against a background of valued remains, a world in which one can leave a personal mark alongside the marks of history."

"The contemporary urban area has man-made characteristics and problems that often override the specificity of site. Or rather, it would be more accurate to say that the specific character of a site is now perhaps as much the result of human action and desires as of the original geological structure."

"Like law and custom, environment tells us how to act without requiring of us a conscious choice. In a church we are reverent and on a beach we are relaxed."

"There's only one thing better than reading about true crime and that's being told about it, particularly when the teller is Phoebe Judge, an American who sounds far nicer than anyone has any right to sound when they know so much about the staggering diversity of human frailty."

"I recorded for two-and-a-half years underneath a towel in my living room when I was a reporter, and no one would have known the difference."

"We try to hold ourselves to the highest journalistic standards that we have. Of course, if I were to say that "Criminal" is in no way meant to be entertainment that would be wrong, but we consider ourselves journalists first."

"People have these preconceived notions of what love is and what it should be and what a love story is. Let’s do the same thing. Let’s confuse people, let’s open up this word."

"I think there's a majority of the Bennington college population and community that feel we came to Bennington for our education ... They could be naked on the campus or not, I don't really care. If people want to protest and get things up in arms, then that's their priority or perogative."

"Suddenly, from another direction came the thwack, thwack of two stones fired in quick succession. They landed squarely on the [hyena]'s head and [it] dropped in its tracks."

""With a spear, you only need a strong arm," Brun said. "And strong legs and heart, and good lungs, and a great deal of courage," Zoug replied."

"There are forces stronger than any magic, but it worked for many years. No one understands spirits completely, not even Mog-ur."

"…I think Disney personifies some of the American ideals in art and in culture in total, because what he was trying to do and specifically with Fantasia. And it was the spirit of the thirties, I believe; it was the post-Depression period, where people were trying to think popular art, art that was consumable by the masses high art that could be put in a tin or another form, a package…"

"At some point in our lives, each of us realizes how really finite we are. For me this realization has been a driving force in my creativity and in my life in general. I paint with a new abandonment almost trying to deny the fact that I too will someday pass on and the only thing remaining will be the images that I leave behind."

"…there was the portrait of John the Baptist draped in furs, with a long furry beard, long hair, bushy eyebrows, and so covered in hair. Well, to a child of I must have been, I'm like four or five now, and this would have been one of our return trips because to a child of that age, it could very easy look like a gorilla. And one of the reasons I mention this story is that, for me, my first impression of art was both horrifying and absolutely magical, because I really believed that was a gorilla…"

"I want more time with Jason. I want more time with my children. I want more time sipping martinis at the Green Mill Jazz Club on Thursday nights. But that is not going to happen. I probably have only a few days left being a person on this planet."

"I tend to believe whatever you decide to look for you will find, whatever you beckon will eventually beckon you."

"The word literature enters the room with its nose in the air. But get it in a corner, ask the right questions, and it will reluctantly fess up to its humble origins. It hails from the Latin 'litterae,' you whisper in your date's ear. It puts on a big act, but it literally just means 'things made of letters."

"For anyone trying to discern what to do with their life: pay attention to what you pay attention to. That's pretty much all the info you need."

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle ... I'm going with B, everything."

"My wife gave me a gift at the end of her column when she left me that empty space, one I would like to offer you. A blank space to fill. The freedom and permission to write your own story. Here is your empty space. What will you do with your own fresh start?"

"I’m on a mission to make up for the huge gaps in my miseducation as a woman of color...At this point in my life, I want to read the classics from the Americas, from Mexico, from women, from the working class, from the Indigenous communities, from everyone who hasn’t been allowed to the podium before."

"Even if a language disappears, I believe a worldview, a syntax, a cadence survives from which the conquering language builds upon, like the stones the Spanish conquistadores gathered from the Indigenous temples to build their Catholic churches. Something like that is happening in our poetic inheritance. Something old and ancient and sacred survives in the spoken word, which is fascinating for those of us who are word-workers."

"All poets would do well to follow the example of Sandra Cisneros, who takes no prisoners and has not made a single compromise in her language."

"Sandra Cisneros's stories are pure poetry."

"Texts like the poetry of Sandra Cisneros were a lifeline. Here was a Mexican girl from Chicago who'd become a writer and traveled alone through Europe."

"the poem "Poet's Progress" is to Sandra, reflecting on our lives...There is a great satisfaction that comes from being in the life that one has chosen. When I say, "Save me from a stupid life," I mean an unquestioned life, those unexamined choices that Sandra and I were both expected to make. We both chose poetry, which, to me, is the exact opposite of the stupid life."

"At all times, Sandra Cisneros has penned poetry of utterly divine language and imagery."

"Sandra Cisneros…has done so much to help other writers…There had been some earlier Chicano works, like Pocho, a novel that came out in 1959. But none of these earlier works really made an impact that showed that there was a great demand for Chicano literature. I think Sandra Cisneros made inroads there…Sandra wasn't the earliest Chicana writer either. But she was the one who stimulated the interest in Chicano and Chicana writing."

"A further measure of the importance of the feminism of women of color was the tremendous efflorescence in their fiction. The writings of Toni Morrison, Sandra Cisneros, Amy Tan, and Louise Erdrich, among others, played a major role in bringing the feminist message and perspective to the masses of American women."

"Sandra Cisneros is one of the most brilliant of today's young writers. Her work is sensitive, alert, nuanceful. It is rich with music and picture.""

"Sandra Cisneros has a gift and an attitude we should all be grateful for."

"(Which writers — novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets — working today do you admire most?) Luis Rodriguez, Edwidge Danticat, Natalie Diaz, Rigoberto González, Virginia Grise, Joy Harjo, Helena Maria Viramontes, Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Denise Chávez, Manuel Muñoz, Dorothy Allison, Levi Romero, John Phillip Santos, Charles M. Blow, Jorge Ramos, Carmen Aristegui, Elena Poniatowska, Luis Alfaro and every Mexican journalist who puts their life in danger by writing the truth. And, I hear a chavalo named Lin-Manuel in New York is pretty good."

"In Chicana writing the love between a grandmother and a granddaughter is holier than the relationship between a mother and a daughter because the mother and daughter have to deal with the reality of the everyday, whereas the grandmother can be revered from afar. Especially if she’s dead, she becomes this mythic symbol in Chicana literature."