SOURCE: "Columnist Mike Royko Dies at Age 64," MSNBC New Services, April 30, 1997.

[In the following excerpt, the author discusses Royko's death and relates some of the columnist's famous quotations.]

Many of America's newspapers have lost one of their most popular voices.

Mike Royko, the Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper columnist whose biting sarcasm and empathy for the common man captured the gritty essence of Chicago for more than three decades, died Tuesday. He was 64.

The Chicago Tribune announced Royko's death on its World Wide Web site.

Royko, whose Chicago Tribune column was syndicated to more than 600 newspapers nationwide, died at 3:30 p.m. at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. He underwent surgery there last week for an aneurysm, a rupture or weakening of a blood vessel.

Royko's column was a cornerstone of the daily newspaper for generations of Chicago readers, first in the now-defunct Chicago Daily News, alter with the Chicago Sun-Times, and since...