Quotes by : Nelson Algren

You don't write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be....

Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose....

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

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

    "You ever been arrested before?"    "No sir. This is my first time."    "The first time....

I am the penny whistle of American literature.

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

The devil lives in a double-shot", Roman explains himself obscurely. "I got a great worm inside. Gnaws....

A book, a true book, is the writer's confessional. For, whether he would have it so or not, he is betrayed,....

But nothing was said about chicken farming anymore. Once, long after it was too late for farming, he....