Quotes & Sayings About Illinois

Just a week earlier, coincidentally, he had quietly terminated a little known year-and-a-half-long stint as silent co-owner of Springfield's German language newspaper. Lincoln had invested $400 in the publication in 1859 to ensure its total loyalty to the Republican party. Mission accomplished, he now turned over full ownership of the Illinois Staats-Anzeiger, presses, type, and all, to his neighbor, editor Theodore Canisius. (Later, Lincoln further rewarded Canisius with a more valuable commodity: the consulate in Vienna.) — Harold Holzer

Things like this don't happen back in Libertyville, Illinois.
You don't get lost in the woods behind your house.
You don't get trapped inside a fortress-like wall ten feet tall. — Travis Thrasher

One of the things I love about working with my brother is that there's a commitment there - an unwavering commitment. From our basement in Illinois when I was three years old to Iceland on a frozen glacier with Matthew McConaughey and Matt Damon in spacesuits - there's a commitment to the pure spectacle, the pure cinema of it. — Jonathan Nolan

I grew up in Glen Ellyn, which is about 20 miles west of Chicago. I attended Glenbard South High School and University of Illinois. I didn't study acting until I moved to Los Angeles after college, but the fact that I was raised in the Chicago area set the stage for all of my comedic and acting sensibilities. — Ryan McPartlin

A Pike, in the California dialect, is a native of Missouri, Arkansas, Northern Texas, or Southern Illinois. The first emigrants that came over the plains were from Pike County, Missouri; but as the phrase, 'a Pike County man,' was altogether too long for this short life of ours, it was soon abbreviated into 'a Pike.' — Bayard Taylor

Well apparently nothing as of December 13, 1978. There was 20 trained police officers came to the house, with a warrant..searched the house, and they went down in the crawlspace ... while I was being held at the jail in Des Plaines, Illinois. They never took anything from the crawlspace other than bringing up lime into the house. There also were no mounds of dirt like what is mentioned in books. — John Wayne Gacy

Seventy-five years ago I was born in Tampico, Illinois, in a little flat above the bank building. We didn't have any other contact with the bank than that. — Ronald Reagan

My profession is about as far away from growing up in southern Illinois as you can get. — Laurie Metcalf

08/14/1025h. Dessert Competitions.
08/14/1315h. Illinois State Fair Infirmary; then motel; then Springfield Memorial Medical Center Emergency Room for distention and possible rupture of transverse colon (false alarm); then motel; incapacitated till well after sunset; whole day a washout; incredibly embarrassing, unprofessional; indescribable. Delete entire day. — David Foster Wallace

I literally integrated the small town of Libertyville, Illinois. I was the first person of color to reside within its borders. — Tom Morello

If I were on death row, my last meal would be from Steak 'n Shake. If I were to take President Obama and his family to dinner and the choice was up to me, it would be Steak 'n Shake. If the pope was to ask where he could get a good plate of spaghetti in America, I would reply, "Your Holiness, have you tried the Chili Mac or the Chili 3-Ways?" A downstate Illinois boy loves the Steak 'n Shake as a Puerto Rican loves rice and beans, an Egyptian loves falafel, a Brit loves bangers and mash, a Finn loves reindeer jerky, and a Canadian loves doughnuts. This doesn't involve taste. It involves a deep-seated conviction that a food is right, has always been right, and always will be. — Roger Ebert

The people that I represent in Illinois care passionately about protecting open space and safeguarding our nation's natural treasures, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. — Robert Dold

If there's a senior citizen in downstate Illinois that's struggling to pay for their medicine and having to chose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer even if it's not my grandparent. — Barack Obama

Reagan grows up in 1920s Dixon, Illinois, and it's the heartland of America. It's a time when Americans are particularly drawn to this small town world because it's beginning to pass. — Robert Dallek

Miles Davis, his parents migrated from Arkansas to Illinois, where he had the luxury of being able to practice for hours upon hours. He never would have been able to do that in the cotton country of Arkansas. — Isabel Wilkerson

The thing about Chicago is that it really isn't like any other place. The architecture and the layout of the city are the best. I'm from the Midwest, and consider myself a Midwesterner. I feel most at home there. I love California. I have great friends in California. I just have always considered Illinois to be home. — Vince Vaughn

Tonight we send a message to our party that here in Illinois, there will be a new generation of Republican leaders and we will fight to provide a better tomorrow for future generations. We've made clear the status quo is no longer acceptable. — Adam Kinzinger

People like to hear songs that they can dance to. Even if they're sitting, they like being made to want to dance and move. By me being a dancer, I know how I'd dance at certain tempos. I was always good at it. — Illinois Jacquet

60 advocates of unorthodox therapies whose credentials are given in the ACS book (above).( Of these 60, thirty-nine or almost two-thirds, hold ... medical degrees from such universities as Harvard, Illinois, Northwestern, Yale, Dublin, Oxford, or Toronto. Two are osteopaths. 3 ... also hold ... (PhD's) ... scientific ... reputable ... 8 others received PhD's in such fields as chemistry, physiology, bacteriology, parasitology, or medical physics, from ... Yale, Johns Hopkins, UC Berkeley, Columbia, and NYU. Thus over 75% ... are medical doctors or doctors of philosophy in scientific areas. — Ralph W. Moss

[O]ne might ask why, in a galaxy of a few hundred billion stars, the aliens are so intent on coming to Earth at all. It would be as if every vertebrate in North America somehow felt drawn to a particular house in Peoria, Illinois. Are we really that interesting? — Seth Shostak

The Mississippi River carries the mud of thirty states and two provinces 2,000 miles south to the delta and deposits 500 million tons of it there every year. The business of the Mississippi, which it will accomplish in time, is methodically to transport all of Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico. — Charles Kuralt

I've always backed energy independence policies, but I've heard from people on this issue like no other. The energy interests of Illinois are far broader and deeper than my North Shore district. — Mark Kirk

We hunt in Florida, where I live in Jay. I hunt in Alabama a little bit, on my uncle's land. I go to Illinois and hunt with some friends up there. I hunt in Mississippi and Missouri. — Boo Weekley

I grew up among farmers in Illinois and so you always have to have the tools you might need in the eventuality of a flat tire or a broken window. — Nick Offerman

Let's put aside the politics and trust the people. Let's embrace the unique opportunity we all have; take the heat and make the hard and difficult decisions, knowing that we're doing it to make things better for the people of Illinois. — Rod Blagojevich

Like most other states, Illinois has little regulation of the economic interests of legislators and relies on public disclosure to keep the lawmaking honest. — Bill Dedman

The Illinois Constitution was written before they realized they'd have a city the size of Chicago in the state. The constitution had severe limits on the ability of any city to raise monies through taxes and bonds. When Chicago grew explosively, they had to come up with ways of getting more money to do more things. — Gary Krist

Illinois is the only state where the present governor rides around in a car whose license plate was made by a previous governor. — David Letterman

He made the country down in Illinois, and He made the Missouri", the little girl continued. "I guess somebody else made the country in these parts. It's not nearly so well done. They forgot the water and the trees. — Arthur Conan Doyle

To my great disappointment, it appears that the politics of division are making a big comeback. Many Americans share my disappointment - especially those who were filled with great hope a few years ago, when then-Senator Obama announced his candidacy in Springfield, Illinois. — Paul Ryan

Nitrogen fertilizer is used on all crops produced in this country, but it is a key plant nutrient to produce corn a critical crop to Illinois farmers. — John Shimkus

EMMA'S BLESSING
WRITTEN IN NAUVOO, ILLINOIS 1844
A blessing Emma wrote for herself, having asked Joseph for a blessing right before he left for Carthage. Not having time, he told her to write the best blessing she could, and he would sign it upon his return. He never returned.

"I desire with all my heart to honor and respect my husband...ever to live in his confidence and by acting in unison with him, retain the place which God has given me by his side. — Angela Eschler

Using the HTTP protocol, computer scientists around the world began making the Internet easier to navigate by inventing point-and-click browsers. One browser in particular, called Mosaic, created in 1993 at the University of Illinois, would help popularize the Web, and therefore the Net, as no software tool had yet done. — Katie Hafner

Five states - Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Illinois and North Carolina - have been identified by the EPA as contributing significantly to Rhode Island pollution. As of 2010, 284 tall smokestacks - stacks over 500 feet - were operating in the United States: needles injecting poison into the atmosphere. — Sheldon Whitehouse

Amtrak is extremely important to the economy of Southern Illinois and I will continue to work with state and local leaders and my colleagues in Congress to secure the necessary funding to maintain full service. — Jerry Costello

I grew up in Cleveland and started doing plays in high school. And I went to the University of Illinois, and I majored in drama. And after school, I went up to Chicago, because I didn't really know anybody in New York or Los Angeles, and I knew people who were doing plays in Chicago. — Alan Ruck

Historian David M. Potter pointed out in 1942 that as president-elect, Lincoln was no more than "simply a lawyer from Springfield, Illinois - a man of great undeveloped capacities and narrowly limited background. He was more fit to become President than to be President. — Harold Holzer

Political leaders in Illinois kicked the can down the road, raised taxes, and ignored fiscal realities. Now, they're realizing the consequences of their actions: credit downgrades and negative outlooks. — Scott Walker

In politics, you never know who's going to die, retire, or - in Illinois - get indicted. — Aaron Schock

'Look at Me' started with Rockford, Illinois and New York and the question of how much image culture was changing our inner lives. That's an abstract idea; you don't think that's going to be a rocking work of fiction, but it seemed to fuse in a way that was interesting. — Jennifer Egan

When I was seven or eight years old, I began to read the science-fiction magazines that were brought by guests into my grandparents' boarding house in Waukegan, Illinois. Those were the years when Hugo Gernsback was publishing 'Amazing Stories,' with vivid, appallingly imaginative cover paintings that fed my hungry imagination. — Ray Bradbury

The people playing on these songs are from Wisconsin and Illinois and Chicago and St. Louis and there's a certain attitude that comes across in the songs and the way that they're performed. I'm born and raised in the Midwest, and my family's been here for generations. This is where I'm from and how I think, and that's reflected in the music I make. — Pokey LaFarge

I grew up with 'Cinderella.' So that was my go-to Disney film, definitely. It was princess-related, and coming from a smaller area in Illinois and wanting to do something greater than myself in Broadway, that was a film that I could really relate to. — Jodi Benson

One voice was raised in dissent. A Springfield lawyer, a former member of Congress and longtime Whig named Abraham Lincoln, took up Douglas's defense of Kansas-Nebraska at the Illinois statehouse in Springfield the day after Douglas spoke at the state fair. In the course of a three-hour speech, Lincoln proceeded to tear Kansas-Nebraska and popular sovereignty to shreds. — Allen C. Guelzo

Abraham Lincoln, a predecessor of Barack Obama in both the White House and the Illinois state legislature, had eighteen months of formal education and became a soldier, surveyor, postmaster, rail-splitter, tavern keeper, and self-taught prairie lawyer. Obama went to Occidental College, Columbia University, and Harvard Law School, and became a "community organizer." I'm not sure that's progress--and it's certainly not "sustainable. — Mark Steyn

I was born in 1970 in Illinois, but all the life I remember I've spent in Chapel Hill, N.C. — Sarah Dessen

ROBERT MASELLO is the author of many previous works of fiction and nonfiction, most recently the novels Blood and Ice and The Medusa Amulet. A native of Evanston, Illinois, he studied writing under the novelists Robert Stone and Geoffrey Wolff at Princeton, and has since taught and lectured at many leading universities. For six years, he was the visiting lecturer in literature at Claremont McKenna College. He now lives and works in Santa Monica, — Robert Masello

The comedy for the Democrats is that they're showing off too much. They need to be putting a boring white guy out there to kind of get a hold of things. Once the boring white guy is out there, then you bust out the junior senator from Illinois who smokes and does cocaine. — Tina Fey

Almost 70 percent of U.S. ag exports travel the upper Mississippi River and the Illinois waterway system. — Jerry Costello

I began acting on stage when I was 7 years old. My first role was as Dorothy in 'The Wizard of Oz' at Chicago's Center on Deafness in Northbrook, Illinois. — Marlee Matlin

Where do business leaders turn for advice to improve their leadership skills? Many successful leaders like Dan Cathy, President and COO of Chick-fil-A turn to the Bible. Speaking at Trinity College in Illinois, "Cathy discussed how scripture dictates Chick-fil-A's business plan. — R.J. Stepansky

Human Rights Watch: Nationwide, the rate of drug admissions to state prison for black men is thirteen times greater than the rate for white men. In ten states black men are sent to state prison on drug charges at rates that are 26 to 57 times greater than those of white men in the same state. In Illinois, for example, the state with the highest rate of black male drug offender admissions to prison, a black man is 57 times more likely to be sent to prison on drug charges than a white man. — Malcolm Gladwell

How good it made them feel, these well-meaning Upper West Side transplants, buying organic produce they didn't even have to wash from a handsome black man who would greet them with an exotic fist bump! An attractive, articulate chap, not unlike the young senator from Illinois they had just congratulated themselves for nominating, who would show the world that slavery was behind us and that we could appreciate Hip Hop. Yes! So many pretty boxes to check all at once! — Jade Chang

Native Americans were driven off their land. Lincoln even took part in the Black Hawk campaign against the Native Americans in Illinois. While they were being exterminated and driven off their land, Whites were collecting assets. — Ishmael Reed

From the air, Vatican City looked like a marble Monopoly set. The Church owned all the property from Broadwalk to Illinois Avenue, has three hotels on every lot, and no matter how often it tossed the dice you just knew it would never land on Go to Jail, it would be forever passing Go and collecting $200. — Tom Robbins

Over the course of the next twenty-four hours, they would have to collect their belongings and change trains in Jackson, Tennessee, to board the Illinois Central Railroad, the legendary rail system that, for a great portion of the twentieth century, carried upward of a million colored people from the Deep South up the country's central artery, across the Mason-Dixon Line, and into a new world called the Midwest. It carried so many southern blacks north that Chicago would go from 1.8 percent black at the start of the twentieth century to one-third black by the time the flow of people finally began to slow in 1970. Detroit's black population would skyrocket from 1.4 percent to 44 percent during the era of the Migration. — Isabel Wilkerson

We go through life so fast and we never really get to enjoy moments. It seems like they go past us ... Tonight I just wanted to take a minute, a moment and soak it in and be a kid from Robbins Illinois and be a kid from Marquette University. — Dwyane Wade

I think Michelle Obama is on the right track with her Let's Move campaign to bring down childhood obesity. She and I come from the same state, Illinois, which is number four in the nation for obese children. One out of five Illinois children are considered obese. Not overweight, obese. And two-thirds of Americans are either overweight or obese. — Aaron Schock

I was living on the wrong side of the tracks in Evanston, Illinois, in a home for boys. We had these Jackson 5 records. I really related to their voices - they were about my age, but they were doing it. — Eddie Vedder

Illinois Senator Paul Simon, once said "The test for a Supreme Court nominee is not where he stands on any one specific issue. The test is this: Will you use your power on the court to restrict freedom or expand it"? — Dick Durbin

I am tired of the misrepresentation, calumny and detraction, heaped upon me by wicked men; and desire and claim, only those principles guaranteed to all men by the Constitution and laws of the United States and of Illinois. — Joseph Smith Jr.

I think of Jeremy telling me I had to be ruthless to be a writer. And I think how I did not go visit my brother and sister and my parents because I was always working on a story and there was never enough time. (But I didn't want to go either.) There never was enough time, and then later I knew if I stayed in my marriage I would not write another book, not the kind I wanted to, and there is that as well. But really, the ruthlessness, I think, comes in grabbing onto myself, in saying: This is me, and I will not go where I can't bear to go - to Amgash, Illinois - and I will not stay in a marriage when I don't want to, and I will grab myself and hurl onward through life, blind as a bat, but on I go! This is the ruthlessness, I think. — Elizabeth Strout

In Illinois a pregnant woman who takes an illegal drug can be prosecuted for 'delivering a controlled substance to a minor.' This is an explicit recognition that the unborn is a person with rights of her own. But that same woman who is prosecuted and jailed for endangering her child is perfectly free to abort her child. In America today, it is illegal to harm your preborn child, but it is perfectly legal to kill him. — Randy Alcorn

I'm among the first girls ever to play Little League baseball, and to my knowledge, the very first in western Illinois. It was 1976, and I was a nine-year-old tomboy whose older brothers had played. — Therese Fowler

I have my strong views and opinions. I really want to transform Illinois government because this state is failing the taxpayers and the children. — Bruce Rauner

National legislation will prevent other states' flawed concealed-weapons laws from threatening the safety of Illinois residents, — Barack Obama

East St. Louis-which the local press refers to as "an inner city without an outer city"-has some of the sickest children in America. Of 66 cities in Illinois, East St. Louis ranks first in fetal death, first in premature birth, and third in infant health. — Jonathan Kozol

There is no identifiable accent here unless you've cultivated a very careful ear. This is an easy place to live, milder in feel than Nebraska to the west, negligibly warmer in the winter than Minnesota to the north, of less imagined consequence to the world than Illinois to the east or Missouri to the south. — John Darnielle

You may pronounce the sentence upon me, honourable judge, but let the world know that in A.D. 1886, in the State of Illinois, eight men were sentenced to death because they believed in a better future; because they had not lost their faith in the ultimate victory of liberty and justice! — August Spies

We're from Rockford, Illinois, but we've always thought international. — Robin Zander

President Obama's fight for rural America is personal. He was raised by a single mom and grandparents from Kansas. He hails from a farming state, Illinois. — Tom Vilsack

Vermont is such a small state, and the most money that's ever been spent in the history of political campaigns there is $2 million. That number is going to be surpassed many times. Vermont remains a "cheap state" for the Republican National Committee. So putting $5 or $10 million into Vermont - compared to New York or California or Illinois - that's small potatoes. — Bernie Sanders

We have to stand up for these issues when it's tough, and that's what I've done. I did it when I was in the state legislature, sponsoring the Illinois version of the DREAM Act, so that children who were brought here through no fault of their own are able to go to college, because we actually want well-educated kids in our country who are able to succeed and become part of this economy and part of the American dream. — Barack Obama

Illinois preschoolers were temporarily saved from the debilitating effects of cereal and milk. — Barack Obama

I lived on a farm in Illinois, and we didn't have a lot of money. But I lived vicariously through magazines. I was obsessed with Jean Paul Gaultier. I still have the scrapbooks, and I've kept all my designs and sketches. — Melissa McCarthy

Things are more like they are now ... than they have EVER been before! — Uncle Arnie Mamath

I had a teacher who recommended I take improv classes in Chicago - I'm from Evanston, Illinois - so I did improv classes at Improv Olympic, and that kind of opened me up. — Lauren Lapkus

I have lectured at Town Hall N.Y., The Library of Congress, Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Wellesley, Columbia, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Louisiana State University, Colorado, Stanford, and scores of other places. — Paul Engle

According to the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979. — George Will

From the 1930s through the 1960s, black people across the country were largely cut out of the legitimate home-mortgage market through means both legal and extralegal. Chicago whites employed every measure, from 'restrictive covenants' to bombings, to keep their neighborhoods segregated. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

We may continue to expect the enjoyment of all the blessings of civil and religious liberty, guaranteed by the Constitution. The citizens of Illinois have done themselves honor, in throwing the mantle of the Constitution over a persecuted and afflicted people. — Joseph Smith Jr.

About thirty truckers in Brighton, Colorado, refused to move their rigs in protest of the high cost of diesel fuel, fuel shortages, and the fifty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit. Other drivers followed suit in Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, Nebraska, Connecticut, and Delaware. In New Jersey, the governor had to call on the National Guard to remove blockading trucks. The truckers complained that higher fuel prices and lower speed limits were threatening their profits. — Tom Lewis

Our prayers at this time are prompted by the fact that the Governor of Illinois today is signing into Illinois law the redefinition of civil marriage, introducing not only an unprecedented novelty into our state law, but also institutionalizing an objectively sinful reality. — Thomas J. Paprocki

Here in the Great Lakes region, a fourth year in a row of declining water levels has caused millions of dollars in losses for shipping companies, marinas and other businesses and prompted further restrictions on future water withdrawals for expanding suburbs. "A lot of people just can't believe that we may be running out of water, living this close to the Great Lakes," said Sarah Nerenberg, a water engineer with the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission, which conducted the study on shortages. — Timothy Egan

Tell you something," the raven said. "I was flying over the Midwest once." He stopped abruptly, closed his eyes for a moment, opened them, and began again. "I was flying over the Midwest. Iowa or Illinois, or some place like that. And I saw this big damn seagull. Right in the middle of Iowa, a seagull. And he was flying around in big, wide circles, real sweeping circles, the way a seagull flies, flapping his wings just enough to keep on the updrafts. Every time he saw water he'd go flying down toward it, yelling, "I found it! I found it!" The poor sonofabitch was looking for the ocean. And every time he saw water, he thought that was the ocean. He didn't know anything about ponds or lakes or anything. All the water he ever saw was the ocean. He thought that was all the water there was. — Peter S. Beagle

After five years of military occupation, the French population of Illinois was exhausted and bewildered. — Daniel Royot

I grew up on the north side of Chicago, in West Rogers Park, an overwhelmingly Jewish neighborhood. When I was 13, my parents moved to Winnetka, Illinois, an upper class, WASPy suburb where Jews - as well as Blacks and Catholics - were unwelcome on many blocks. I suffered the spiritual equivalent of whiplash. — Scott Turow

It is unacceptable that disabled veterans in Illinois rank at the bottom of the list when it comes to disability pay. We owe our disabled veterans more than speeches, parades and monuments. — Dick Durbin

Among the early commercial adopters of wild beer were the Cottonwood Brewery of Boone, North Carolina, and Joe's Brewery of Champaign, Illinois. Brewer John Isenhour gained a "cult status" for his production of beers with a lambic profile in the mid-1990s using wild yeast and bacteria that he kept active at various stages of the lambic fermentation cycle. John quite successfully marketed the "Lambic" to his rather conservative clientele in this central Illinois college town as "Belgian lemonade. — Jeff Sparrow

Growing up as a kid, we moved all over the country on a fairly frequent basis, from New Jersey to Texas, California, Illinois ... we moved 21 times in my first 17 years. — J. Michael Straczynski

I majored in theater in college. I did a couple of plays in high school, and I really enjoyed it, so I went to Illinois Wesleyan University and got a degree, and then I went back to Chicago and started doing theater in all the companies around the city for about 11 years before I moved out to L.A. — Kevin Dunn

I was enamored of New York City intellectual life and was really into Philip Roth because I was raised by self-loathing Midwesterners who were from southern Illinois, who felt like fish out of water when they came to the East Coast when I was a kid. — Meghan Daum

I was a crazy creature with a head full of carnival spangles until I was thirty, and then the only man I ever really cared for stopped waiting and married someone else. So in spite, in anger at myself, I told myself I deserved my: fate for not having married when the best chance was at hand. I started traveling. My luggage was snowed under blizzards of travel stickers. I have been alone in Paris, alone in Vienna, alone in London, and all in all, it is very much like being alone in Green Town, Illinois. It is, in essence, being alone. Oh, you have plenty of time to think, improve your manners, sharpen your conversations. But I sometimes think I could easily trade a verb tense or a curtsy for some company that would stay over for a thirty-year weekend. — Ray Bradbury

I grew up in a small town in Illinois, and my dad was a basketball coach. Thanks to him, I have excellent fundamentals in both basketball and baseball. — Nick Offerman

Six days later, the president named a postmaster for New Salem, Illinois, a twenty-four-year-old lawyer who had lost a race for the state legislature. He was a Clay man, but the post was hardly major, and Abraham Lincoln was happy to accept the appointment. — Jon Meacham

Illinois corn farmers are the Nation's number two exporter of feed grains. — John Shimkus

When I was in high school, my uncle, who went to the races quite a bit, got me interested. Then when I went to college at Southern Illinois University, just a few hours from Louisville, we used to go to the Kentucky Derby, and I got to see Secretariat and Riva Ridge win. — Kenny Troutt

I wanted to be a senator from Illinois. I was obsessed with politics. My dad was friends with a lot of local politicians, so I would hang out with them on Election Day and hand out buttons. Somehow, even though they were opposite, I loved Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. I thought they were the coolest guys! — Ike Barinholtz

Whole generations of students were blown off their life courses, rendered jobless, unmoored by direction or occupation. My father raged about the incessant closing of the university. — Nayomi Munaweera

It was the end of the October term of my sophomore year, and everything was petty normal, except for Social Studies, which was no big surprise. Mr. Dimas, who taught the class, had a reputation for unconventional teaching methods. For midterms he had blindfolded us, then had us each stick a pin in a map of the world and we got to write essays on wherever the pin stuck. I got Decatur, Illinois. Some of the guys complained because they drew places like Ulan Bator or Zimbabwe. They were lucky. YOU try writing ten thousand words on Decatur, Illinois. — Neil Gaiman