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

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.

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 like Man himself— loneliest creation of all this very old poor earth.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.