"Big-shot town, small-shot town, jet-propelled old-fashioned town, by old-world hands with new-world tools built into a place whose heartbeat carries farther than its shout, whose whispering in the night sounds less hollow than its roistering noontime laugh: they have builded a heavy-shouldered laughter here who went to work too young. / And grew up too arrogant, too gullible, too swift to mockery and too slow to love. So careless and so soon careworn, so challenging yet secretly despairing β how can such a cocksure Johnson of a town catch anybody but a barfly's heart?"
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("heavy-shouldered": see the earlier "City of the Big Shoulders" in Carl Sandburg's 1916 poem "Chicago".)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Chicago%3A_City_on_the_Make
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Carl Sandburg
1878 β 1967
US-amerikanischer Dichter
44 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Carl Sandburg β
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