I bet you think fellas are the ones to remember a girl -- don't you?" He shook his head hurriedly, that he'd always thought that." Fellas have all the fun 'n she just sees one right after another, so it seems like HE'D remember her, better 'n SHE'D remember him, only it works the other way around. I ain't forgot one single fella, all these years. But I bet there ain't TWO'd know me from a big of bananas this minute.

— Nelson Algren

I don't know what kind of great I'm bound to be," Dove considered his prospects calmly, "all I know for certain is I'm born a world-shaker.

— Nelson Algren

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.

— 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

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.

— Nelson Algren

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

— Nelson Algren

She was neither widow nor mother: she only yearned for the dignity of a woman who had once belonged, somewhere, to somebody. She had belonged to no one, for she had never wanted chick nor child. Her idea of home had been any side-alley entrance and a pint of tinted gin. All she had ever striven for was small change left lying by strangers on North Clark Street bars; and any man's bottle at all.

— Nelson Algren

That's how it's always been: I was always in the clear so long as I was truly guilty. But the minute my motives were honest someone would finger me.

— Nelson Algren

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.

— Nelson Algren

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

— Nelson Algren