Nelson Algren quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Nelson Algren

Nelson Algren Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Nelson Algren on Wise Famous Quotes.

If Jesus Christ treated me like you do, I'd drive in the nails myself.

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

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.

Never eat in a place called 'Mom's'.

For the masses who do the city's labor also keep the city's heart.

There is no way of being a creative writer in America without being a loser.

If you write something, and you believe in it, you'd like to see sixty million people moved by it.

Well, I may get drunk," the Widow admitted, "but I don't stagger. Sometimes I fall down. But I don't stagger.

Never lie down with a woman who's got more troubles than you.

For way down there, in a shot glass's false bottom, everything was bound to turn out fine after all.

In this neighborhood, with only forty-five cents, you're a bum. But Sobotnik, even with two dollars, he's still a bum.

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

I couldn't buy the lice off a sick cat, the cabbie answered from the very depths of self-deprecation.

Loving Chicago is like loving a woman with a broken nose.

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

I am against censorship. I don't think there is anything more stupid than censorship.

When I burn please bury me deep
Somewhere on West Division Street
Put a bottle beneat' my head
'n a bottle beneat' my feet

I am the penny whistle of American literature.

I went out there for a thousand a week, and I worked Monday, and I got fired Wednesday. The guy that hired me was out of town Tuesday.

Chicago is an October sort of city even in spring.

The city divided by the river is further divided by racial and lingual differences.

Any writer who knows what he's doing isn't doing very much.

Heroin got the drive awright-but there's not a tingle to a ton-you got to get M to get the tingle-tingle.

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

(Chicago is) the only major city in the country where you can easily buy your way out of a murder rap.

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.

There's people in hell who want ice water.

It is strange how fragile this man-creature is ... in one second he's just garbage. Garbage, that's all.

Well, we all have our good days.
That one bad night can ruin.

The only way I could finish a book and get a plot was just to keep making it longer until something happens.

The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.

I don't recommend being a bachelor, but it helps if you want to write.

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.

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

And money can't buy everything. For example: poverty.

Since I'm essentially optimistic, I can't imagine a world in which man is totally decimated or degraded.

Literature is made upon any occasion that a challenge is put to the legal apparatus by conscience in touch with humanity.