Quotes by Nelson Algren

• I went out there for a thousand a week, and I worked Monday, and I got fired Wednesday. The guy that hired me was out of town Tuesday.
• Chicago is an October sort of city even in spring.
• Literature is made upon any occasion that a challenge is put to the legal apparatus by conscience in touch with humanity.
• 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.
• 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.
• The Impossible Generalized Man today is the critic who believes in loving those unworthy of love as well as those worthy - yet believes this only insofar as no personal risk is entailed. Meaning he loves no one, worthy or no. This is what makes him impossible.
• Loving Chicago is like loving a woman with a broken nose.