"I'm a guy like this," Gino explained to Jeanie; "I like anythin' against the odds. I don't like nothin' safe. I'm a guy like this too: I don't like gettin' caught. But mostly I'm a guy like this: I don't like gettin' laughed at."
    He lived as he drove, as he gambled and as he loved: for keeps. Taking no man's laughter. And letting the small stakes go.

Chicago is an October sort of city even in spring.

And the men come on again: the flashy and the penitent, the beaten ones and the wise guys, the hangdog heel thieves and the disdainful coneroos, walking, half crouched, through a downpour of light like men walking through rain. The frayed and the hesitant, the sleek and the bold, the odd fish and the callow youths, the good-humored bindle stiffs and the bitter veterans.

... Chicago divided your heart. Leaving you loving the joint for keeps. Yet knowing it never can love you.

Yet once you've come to be part of this particular patch, you'll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real.

It's the place built out of Man's ceaseless failure to overcome himself. Out of Man's endless war against himself we build our successes as well as our failures. Making it the city of all cities most like Man himself— loneliest creation of all this very old poor earth.