Payment Is Due: On Cynthia Pelayo’s “Children of Chicago”

"The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter, eh?" — Dashiell Hammett

Noir

"The older one grows, the more one likes indecency." — Virginia Woolf

"Art is making something out of nothing and selling it." — Frank Zappa

"The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not." — Gertrude Stein

"The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it." — Frank Herbert

"Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't." — Mark Twain

"As far as I'm concerned, being any gender is a drag." — Patti Smith

"I have nothing to say, and I am saying it, and that is poetry." — John Cage

"You can't ignore politics, no matter how much you'd like to." — Molly Ivins