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Nelson Algren Biography

Nelson Algren (March 28, 1909 – May 9, 1981) was an American writer. Algren may be best known for The Man with the Golden Arm, a 1949 novel that won the National Book Award and was adapted as the 1955 film of the same name.

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Nelson Algren Quotes

When we get 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 is by cutting off those who don't have enough.

Car, Cutting, House, Houses, Live, Richer

(Chicago is) the only major city in the country where you can easily buy your way out of a murder rap.

Cities, Country, Murder, Rap, Way

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.

Blow, Creative, Novel, Ruthlessness, Writing

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

Challenges, Conscience, Humanity, Literature

The devil lives in a double-shot", Roman explains himself obscurely. "I got a great worm inside. Gnaws and gnaws. Every day I drown him and every day he gnaws. Help me drown the worm, fellas.

Alcohol, Devil, Drown, Helping, Roman

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

America, Creative, Loser, Way

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.

Deception, Deep, Gross, Remains, Self, Vision

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.

Against, Emotional, Mean, Poetry, Writing

It is strange how fragile this man-creature is. . . . . in one second he's just garbage. Garbage, that's all.

Fragile, Garbage, Men, Strange

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.

Cards, Men, Mom, Sleep, Woman, Worse

. . . 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 inside you.

Littles, Said, Smile, Sort, Street, Stuff

Never lie down with a woman who's got more troubles than you.

Advice, Dating, Down, Lie, Lying, Woman

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

Cooking, Eat, Food, Mom, Place

The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph. D.

Assessing, Failures, Livelihood, Men, Work

For the masses who do the city's labor also keep the city's heart.

Cities, Heart, Keep, Mass, Masses

Any writer who knows what he's doing isn't doing very much.

Knows, Writer, Writing

Chicago is an October sort of city even in spring.

Chicago, Cities, Sort, Spring

There's people in hell who want ice water.

Hell, Ice Water, People, Want, Water

. . . Chicago divided your heart. Leaving you loving the joint for keeps. Yet knowing it never can love you.

Divided, Heart, Knowing, Leaving, Love You, Loving

Watch for a wild boy of no particular clan, ready for anything, always armed. Prefers fighting to toil, drink to fighting, chasing women to booze or battle: may attempt all three concurrently.

Battle, Booze, Boys, Drink, Fighting, Wild

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Nelson Algren Biography

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