Quotes from The Man With the Golden Arm

Nelson Algren ·  464 pages

Rating: (2.2K votes)


“There's people in hell who want ice water.”
― Nelson Algren, quote from The Man With the Golden Arm


“He was falling between glacial walls, he didn't know how anyone could fall so far away from everyone else in the world. So far to fall, so cold all the way, so steep and dark between those morphine-coloured walls...”
― Nelson Algren, quote from The Man With the Golden Arm


“If Jesus Christ treated me like you do, I’d drive in the nails myself.”
― Nelson Algren, quote from The Man With the Golden Arm


“Then the wooden benches along the walls, where so many outcasts had slept, would be lit by a sort of slow, clocked lightning til the bulb steadied and fastened its tiny feral fury upon the center of the room like a single sullen and manic eye. To burn on there with a steady hate. Til morning wearied and dimmed it away to nothing more than some sort of little old lost gray child of a district-station moon, all its hatred spent.”
― Nelson Algren, quote from The Man With the Golden Arm


“For way down there, in a shot glass's false bottom, everything was bound to turn out fine after all.”
― Nelson Algren, quote from The Man With the Golden Arm



“I couldn't buy the lice off a sick cat," the cabbie answered from the very depths of self-deprecation.”
― Nelson Algren, quote from The Man With the Golden Arm


“Heroin got the drive awright-but there’s not a tingle to a ton-you got to get M to get the tingle-tingle.”
― Nelson Algren, quote from The Man With the Golden Arm


About the author

Nelson Algren
Born place: in Michigan, The United States
Born date March 28, 1909
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Death really did not matter to him but life did, and therefore the sensation he felt when they gave their decision was not a feeling of fear but of nostalgia.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, quote from One Hundred Years of Solitude


“Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches.”
― William Goldman, quote from The Princess Bride


“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, quote from The Little Prince


“Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?"...
"It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine...”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, quote from The Secret Garden


“Laila has moved on. Because in the end she knows that’s all she can do. That and hope.”
― Khaled Hosseini, quote from A Thousand Splendid Suns


Interesting books

The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume II: Microcosmic God
(340)
The Complete Stories...
by Theodore Sturgeon
Live by Night
(18.7K)
Live by Night
by Dennis Lehane
A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army
(2.3K)
A Writer at War: Vas...
by Vasily Grossman
THE POWER OF YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS MIND (Tamil)
(26.3K)
THE POWER OF YOUR SU...
by Joseph Murphy
Furthermore
(7.8K)
Furthermore
by Tahereh Mafi
The Way I Used to Be
(10.7K)
The Way I Used to Be
by Amber Smith

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.