“ 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 writing.… Nelson Algren
“ Literature is made upon any occasion that a challenge is put to the legal apparatus by conscience in touch with humanity. Nelson Algren
“ ...he said, with sort of a little derisive smile, "How can you walk down the street with all this stuff going on inside you?" I said, "I don't know how you can walk down the street with nothing going… Nelson Algren
“ 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. Nelson Algren
“ 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-co… Nelson Algren
“ 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 Illin… Nelson Algren
“ 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. Her i… Nelson Algren
“ Actually, they fought to fill the emptiness of their lives as they filled their empty glasses. They fought—not because the liquor was in them, but because it did not fill them enough. Nelson Algren
“ Without hesitation, Dove chose the nowhere road. For that was the only place, in his heart of hearts, that he really wanted to go. Nelson Algren
“ 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. Nelson Algren
“ 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 most… Nelson Algren
“ 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. Nelson Algren
“ Well, I may get drunk," the Widow admitted, "but I don't stagger. Sometimes I fall down. But I don't stagger. Nelson Algren
“ The devil lives in a double-shot", Roman explains himself obscurely. "I got a great worm inside. Gnaws and gnaws. Every day I drown him and every day he gnaws. Help me drown the worm, fellas. Nelson Algren
“ Along the pavement-colored hall doors stood half open on either side, all the way down; each one was numbered in bright bald tin, each one stood just so much ajar in the gas-lit corridor. Just enough… Nelson Algren
“ 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. Nelson Algren
