Nelson Algren

"I'll be all right so long as it has been written on some corner of a human heart. On the heart, it doesn't matter how you spell it."

"To see life steadily, and see it whole, as a creature of the deep sees it, from below. Our myths are so many, our vision so dim, our self-deception so deep and our smugness so gross that scarcely any …"

"I've always figured the only way I could finish a book and get a plot was just to keep making it longer and longer until something happens – you know, until it finds its own plot – because you can't o…"

"I don't know many writers. Well, I dunno, but I do have the feeling that other writers can't help you with writing. I've gone to writers' conferences and writers' sessions and writers' clinics, and th…"

"A writer who knows what he is doing isn't doing very much."

"The American middle class's faith in personal comfort as an end in itself is, in essence, a denial of life. And it has been imposed upon American writers and playwrights strongly enough to cut them of…"

"Living in a very dense area, you're conscious of how the people underneath live, and you have a certain feeling toward them – so much so that you'd rather live among them than with the business classe…"

"Well, I haven't consciously tried to develop . The only thing I've consciously tried to do was put myself in a position to hear the people I wanted to hear talk talk. I used the police lineup for I do…"