Writer Quotes by Nelson Algren

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

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

— Nelson Algren

Chicago is an October sort of city even in spring.

— 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

“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

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

— Nelson Algren

“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

“A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery.”

— Nelson Algren

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

— Nelson Algren

“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

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

— Nelson Algren

“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

“And when I read one of those scapegoat pieces about the "viciousness" of drug pushers, and extolling the basic humanitarianism of the nark-squad hero,…

— Nelson Algren

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

— Nelson Algren

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

— Nelson Algren