"I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn't any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles." Chapter 1, pg. 3.

"While the old lady, following her own idea of what that fate would be, continued to find various jobs for me.
"Saying 'various jobs,' I give out the Rosetta stone, so to speak, to my entire life.
"These earliest jobs, though, that she chose for us, they weren't generally of the callousing kind. If hard, they were temporary and supposed to lead to something better. She...