Quotes by Nelson Algren

“For people never say anything the same way twice; no two of them ever say it the same. The greatest imaginative writer that ever brooded in a lavender robe and a mellowed briar in his teeth, couldn...”

“... Chicago divided your heart. Leaving you loving the joint for keeps. Yet knowing it never can love you.”

“Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.”

“You don't write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich. A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative ...”

“A book, a true book, is the writer's confessional. For, whether he would have it so or not, he is betrayed, directly or indirectly, by his characters, into presenting publicly his innermost feelings.”

“She was neither widow nor mother: she only yearned for the dignity of a woman who had once belonged, somewhere, to somebody. She had belonged to no one, for she had never wanted chick nor child. He...”

“Never sleep with someone whose troubles are worse than your own.”

“It's the place built out of Man's ceaseless failure to overcome himself. Out of Man's endless war against himself we build our successes as well as our failures. Making it the city of all cities mo...”

“I bet you think fellas are the ones to remember a girl -- don't you?"He shook his head hurriedly, that he'd always thought that."Fellas have all the fun 'n she just sees one right after another, so...”

“But nothing was said about chicken farming anymore. Once, long after it was too late for farming, he might catch her crying and pet her a bit. 'What's the matter, little baby? You got a fever? You ...”

“To literary critics a book is assumed to be guilty until it proves itself innocent.”

“I don't know what kind of great I'm bound to be," Dove considered his prospects calmly, "all I know for certain is I'm born a world-shaker.”

“That's how it's always been: I was always in the clear so long as I was truly guilty. But the minute my motives were honest someone would finger me.”

“"You ever been arrested before?""No sir. This is my first time.""The first time this week, you mean.""Oh, I been arrested in Michigan. I thought you meant in Illinois. I never been arrested in Illi...”

“The hard necessity of bringing the judge on the bench down into the dock has been the peculiar responsibility of the writer in all ages of man.”

“You can't be a good writer in the States anymore because to be a good one you have to have a country where you can be poor and still eat, and still make your living standard secondary to your writi...”

“I am the penny whistle of American literature.”

“He was falling between glacial walls, he didn't know how anyone could fall so far away from everyone else in the world. So far to fall, so cold all the way, so steep and dark between those morphine...”

“Without hesitation, Dove chose the nowhere road. For that was the only place, in his heart of hearts, that he really wanted to go.”

“The farther away you get from the literary traffic, the closer you are to sources.”