Douglas Perry > Quotes

“Being guided by your own thoughts and abilities, living out there on the high wire and being rewarded for it: That was the Chicago way. Nothing else counted. If it were sensational enough, whether a scientific breakthrough, a rousing new style of music, or an underworld murder, it would be celebrated.”
― Douglas Perry, The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers who Inspired Chicago

“Her play would not only make no distinction between traditional comedy and farce, it also would make no distinction between comedy and tragedy. They were all one and the same in a superficial modern world of mass communication and overpopulated, spirit-crushing cities, a world that produced anonymous men and women seized by insecurity and a frantic desire for money, status, and attention.”
― Douglas Perry, The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers who Inspired Chicago

“Eliot knew the Heights well enough to have spent as little time there as possible while growing up. The town’s small downtown had some class, especially the Hotel Victoria, designed by Louis Sullivan, but it was a thin facade. Three blocks in any direction and you felt like you might be set upon by wild dogs.”
― Douglas Perry, Eliot Ness: The Rise and Fall of an American Hero

“After Prohibition got under way, alcohol consumption spiked—and continued to rise even as the quality of the spirits plummeted. For a whole generation, across class lines, defying the dry law became an act of self-definition—a necessary rebellion against a sordid, hypocritical ruling class.”
― Douglas Perry, The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers who Inspired Chicago