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
Nelson Algren
Born place: in Michigan, The United States
Born date March 28, 1909
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“...Or we can blaze! Become legends in our own time, strike fear in the heart of mediocre talent everywhere! We can scald dogs, put records out of reach! Make the stands gasp as we blow into an unearthly kick from three hundred yards out! We can become God's own messengers delivering the dreaded scrolls! We can race dark Satan himself till he wheezes fiery cinders down the back straightaway....They'll speak our names in hushed tones, 'those guys are animals' they'll say! We can lay it on the line, bust a gut, show them a clean pair of heels. We can sprint the turn on a spring breeze and feel the winter leave our feet! We can, by God, let our demons loose and just wail on!”
― quote from Once a Runner
“Think of it as a life experience," I mumbled. "Isn't your dad always saying we need more of that?"
"I don't think prancing around PJ Jamieson's pool in our underwear is exactly what he had in mind.”
― Jody Gehrman, quote from Confessions of a Triple Shot Betty
“To describe heaven it is not necessary to transport the materials of earth there. One must leave earth & its materials where they are, so as to beautify life with its ideal. To address Elohim familiarly is an unseemly buffoonery. The best way of showing him gratitude is not by yelling in his ears that he is mighty, that he created the world, that we are wormlets compared to his greatness. He knows it better than we. Men may excuse themselves of informing him of that. The best way of showing him gratitude is to console humanity, to restore all to it, take it by the hand & treat it like a brother. This is more genuine.”
― Comte de Lautréamont, quote from Maldoror and the Complete Works
“Daddy didn’t say anything for a minute or so, and then he reached up and caught a firefly as it glowed beside him. “See this light?” he asked me when the firefly lit up his hand. “Yes’r.” “That light is bright enough to light up a little speck of the night sky so a man can see it a ways away. That’s what God expects us to do. We’re to be lights in the dark, cold days that are this world. Like fireflies in December.”
― Jennifer Erin Valent, quote from Fireflies in December
“Never forget Yesu is King. Never forget your home is in another world. Never forget your father will be waiting to see you again.”
― Randy Alcorn, quote from Safely Home
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