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41 " If Jesus Christ treated me like you do, I’d drive in the nails myself. "
― Nelson Algren , The Man with the Golden Arm
42 " Our myths are so many, our vision so dim, our self-deception so deep and our smugness so gross that scarcely any way now remains of reporting the American Century except from behind the billboards ... "
― Nelson Algren
43 " I write at high speed because boredom is bad for my health. "
44 " As certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery. "
45 " 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 get. And you won’t write anything that anyone will read a second time either. "
46 " I'm not against sentimentality. I think you need it. I mean, I don't think you get a true picture of people without it in writing... It's a kind of poetry, it's an emotional poetry, and, to bring it back to the literary scene, I don't think anything is true that doesn't have it, that doesn't have poetry in it. "
47 " The less he sees of other writers the more of a writer he will ultimately become. When he sees scarcely anyone except other writers, he is ready for New York. "
48 " Nor all your piety nor all your preaching, nor all your crusades nor all your threats can stop one girl from going on the turf, can stop one mugging, can keep one promising youth from becoming a drug addict, so long as the force that drives the owners of our civilization is away from those who own nothing at all. "
― Nelson Algren , Never Come Morning
49 " When we got more houses than we can live in, more cars than we can ride in, more food than we can eat ourselves, the only way of getting richer by cutting off those who don't have enough. If everybody has more than enough, what good is my more-than-enough? What good is a wide meadow open to everyone? It isn't until others are fenced out that the open pasture begins to have real value. What good is being a major if you can't have more than a second lieutenant? What good is a second lieutenant for that matter? "
― Nelson Algren , A Walk on the Wild Side
50 " these will suffice; who knows but we may be on a slope which leads down toaboriginal savagery. But of this 1 am sure: if we are to escape, we must not yield a foot upon demanding a fair field and an honest race to all ideas. "
― Nelson Algren , Nonconformity: Writing on Writing
51 " For way down there, in a shot glass's false bottom, everything was bound to turn out fine after all. "
52 " 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, I'm saddened. Because it isn't Margo and it isn't Max who keeps the traffic moving: it's that same nark-squad hero with a small, brown paper bag that hustlers and pushers alike have to keep filled if they want to stay on the street. "
― Nelson Algren , Entrapment and Other Writings
53 " I couldn't buy the lice off a sick cat," the cabbie answered from the very depths of self-deprecation. "
54 " Heroin got the drive awright-but there’s not a tingle to a ton-you got to get M to get the tingle-tingle. "
55 " Jane Addams too knew that Chicago's blood was hustler's blood. Knowing that Chicago, like John the Baptist and Bathhouse John, like Billy Sunday and Big Bill, forever keeps two faces, one for winners and one for losers, one for hustlers and one for squares. "
― Nelson Algren , Chicago: City on the Make
56 " Well, we all have our good days.That one bad night can ruin. "
57 " He’s just a pore lonesome wife-left fellar. "
58 " Well, I may get drunk," the Widow admitted, "but I don't stagger. Sometimes I fall down. But I don't stagger. "
― Nelson Algren , The Neon Wilderness
59 " A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery. "
60 " Belonging nowhere, no one can tell who he really is. Who one really is depends on what world he belongs to. The secret multitudes who belong to no world, no way of life, no particular time and place, are the truly displaced persons: displaced from their true selves. They are not the disinherited: they are those who have disinherited their own selves. "