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

“Well, clearly not. Goodness boss, just look at those filthy paws. I’ve never seen any fish carry paws like those. Usually they are cleaner.”
― H.S. Crow, quote from Lunora and the Monster King


“Despair demands less of us, it’s more predictable, and in a sad way safer. Authentic hope requires clarity—seeing the troubles in this world—and imagination, seeing what might lie beyond these situations that are perhaps not inevitable and immutable.”
― Rebecca Solnit, quote from Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People Power


“Despite these criticisms of his criticisms, my stance has a major problem, one that causes Morse to conclude that the contributions of neuroscience to the legal system “are modest at best and neuroscience poses no genuine, radical challenges to concepts of personhood, responsibility, and competence.”25 The problem can be summarized in a hypothetical exchange: Prosecutor: So, professor, you’ve told us about the extensive damage that the defendant sustained to his frontal cortex when he was a child. Has every person who has sustained such damage become a multiple murderer, like the defendant? Neuroscientist testifying for the defense: No. Prosecutor: Has every such person at least engaged in some sort of serious criminal behavior? Neuroscientist: No. Prosecutor: Can brain science explain why the same amount of damage produced murderous behavior in the defendant? Neuroscientist: No. The problem is that, even amid all these biological insights that allow us to be snitty about those silly homunculi, we still can’t predict much about behavior. Perhaps at the statistical level of groups, but not when it comes to individuals.”
― Robert M. Sapolsky, quote from Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst


“This entire time I've been closing myself off from love., but it's been the solution all along. I've built walls at every turn. No more.”
― Sara Ella, quote from Unblemished


“Flowers reconnect us to our own beautiful and unique essence as human beings. They wake up our positive qualities so that we feel them and they begin to emanate from us, just as each flower radiates its own unique quality.”
― Katie Hess, quote from Flowerevolution: Blooming into Your Full Potential with the Magic of Flowers


Interesting books

Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti
(1K)
Total Freedom: The E...
by Jiddu Krishnamurti
The Perfect Bride for Mr. Darcy
(1.4K)
The Perfect Bride fo...
by Mary Lydon Simonsen
The Midnight Mayor
(3.4K)
The Midnight Mayor
by Kate Griffin
Russka: the Novel of Russia
(9.8K)
Russka: the Novel of...
by Edward Rutherfurd
Scoop
(14.6K)
Scoop
by Evelyn Waugh
The Man
(1.2K)
The Man
by Irving Wallace

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.