...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 on… — Nelson Algren Copy Share Image
The great trains howling from track to track all night. The taut and telegraphic murmur of ten thousand city wires, drawn most cruelly against a city sky. The rush of city waters, beneath the city streets. The passionate passing of… — Nelson Algren Copy Share Image
When we get more houses than we can live in, more cars than we can ride in, more food than we can eat ourselves,… — Nelson Algren Copy Share Image
“For way down there, in a shot glass's false bottom, everything was bound to turn out fine after all.” — Nelson Algren Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“Big-shot town, small-shot town, jet-propelled old-fashioned town, by old-world hands with new-world tools built into a place whose heartbeat carries farther than its shout,… — Nelson Algren Copy Share Image
“Nor all your piety nor all your preaching, nor all your crusades nor all your threats can stop one girl from going on the… — Nelson Algren Copy Share Image
“A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery.” — Nelson Algren Copy Share Image
“If you feel you belong to things as they are, you won’t hold up anyone in the alley no matter how hungry you may… — Nelson Algren Copy Share Image
Literature is made upon any occasion that a challenge is put to the legal apparatus by conscience in touch with humanity. — Nelson Algren Copy Share Image
“faith in the eventual supremacy of reason has become so timid that we dare not enter our convictions in the open lists, to win… — Nelson Algren Copy Share Image
