The New Year Quote by Gary Cole

Nostalgia gets a comedian's timing here: Chicago is so lovable you can only complain about it by naming its worst months like theyre two notorious relatives. Gary Cole frames homesickness as a punchline, and the joke works because anyone whos lived in a cold-weather city understands the bargain. You dont leave because you stop loving the place; you leave because the place occasionally tries to freeze you into reconsidering your life choices.

The specificity of January and February is doing the heavy lifting. Not winter, not the cold, not snow in the abstract, but the stretch after the holidays when the glamour is gone and the city turns into logistics: scraped windshields, delayed trains, gray slush that never fully melts. By exempting just those two months, Cole implies the rest is worth enduring: the neighborhood loyalties, the food, the bar warmth, the summer lakefront, the loud civic confidence. Its a love letter with a practical caveat.

As an actor, Cole is also speaking in character without naming one. The line has that Midwestern rhythm: affection expressed through complaint, sincerity protected by irony. The subtext is identity. Missing Chicago isnt just missing a backdrop; its missing a way of moving through the world. Yet the weather becomes an acceptable scapegoat, letting you admit longing without sounding sentimental. Its an old urban joke, sharpened into a clean, modern confession.