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. – Nelson Algren
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. – Nelson Algren
The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D. – Nelson Algren
Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Moms. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own. – Nelson Algren
The motion picture made in Hollywood, if it is to create art at all, must do so within such strangling limitations of subject and treatment that it is a blind wonder it ever achieves any distinction beyond the purely mechanical slickness of a glass and chromium bathroom. – Raymond Chandler