We struck the home trail now, and in a few hours were in that astonishing Chicago—a city where they are always rubbing a lamp, and fetching up the genii, and contriving and achieving new impossibilities. It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with Chicago—she outgrows her prophecies faster than she can make them. She is always a novelty; for she is never the Chicago you saw when you passed through the last time.

—MARK TWAIN

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.

 —RUDYARD KIPLING

And then when I went to Chicago, that’s when I had these outer space experiences and went to the other planets.

—SUN RA