The Neon Wilderness Quotes

“The devil lives in a double-shot", Roman explains himself obscurely. "I got a great worm inside. Gnaws and gnaws. Every day I drown him and every day he gnaws. Help me drown the worm, fellas.”
― Nelson Algren, The Neon Wilderness

“Actually, they fought to fill the emptiness of their lives as they filled their empty glasses. They fought—not because the liquor was in them, but because it did not fill them enough.”
― Nelson Algren, The Neon Wilderness

“Well, I may get drunk," the Widow admitted, "but I don't stagger. Sometimes I fall down. But I don't stagger.”
― Nelson Algren, The Neon Wilderness

“That's how it's always been: I was always in the clear so long as I was truly guilty. But the minute my motives were honest someone would finger me.”
― Nelson Algren, The Neon Wilderness

“    "You ever been arrested before?"
    "No sir. This is my first time."
    "The first time this week, you mean."
    "Oh, I been arrested in Michigan. I thought you meant in Illinois. I never been arrested in Illinois. I never did no wrong in Illinois."
    "What good does that do you?"
    "It don't. It's just that I love my state so much I go to Michigan to steal," he explained with an expression almost beatific.”
― Nelson Algren, The Neon Wilderness

“    "I'm a guy like this," Gino explained to Jeanie; "I like anythin' against the odds. I don't like nothin' safe. I'm a guy like this too: I don't like gettin' caught. But mostly I'm a guy like this: I don't like gettin' laughed at."
    He lived as he drove, as he gambled and as he loved: for keeps. Taking no man's laughter. And letting the small stakes go.”
― Nelson Algren, The Neon Wilderness

“In this neighborhood, with only forty-five cents, you're a bum. But Sobotnik, even with two dollars, he's still a bum.”
― Nelson Algren, The Neon Wilderness

“Along the pavement-colored hall doors stood half open on either side, all the way down; each one was numbered in bright bald tin, each one stood just so much ajar in the gas-lit corridor. Just enough to reveal half-dressed men and women waiting for the rain or about to make love or already through loving and about to get drunk; or already half drunk and beginning to argue about how soon it was going to rain or whose turn it was to run down for whisky or whether it was time to make love again or forget it for once and just wait for rain.”
― Nelson Algren, The Neon Wilderness

“She was neither widow nor mother: she only yearned for the dignity of a woman who had once belonged, somewhere, to somebody. She had belonged to no one, for she had never wanted chick nor child. Her idea of home had been any side-alley entrance and a pint of tinted gin. All she had ever striven for was small change left lying by strangers on North Clark Street bars; and any man's bottle at all.”
― Nelson Algren, The Neon Wilderness

“And the men come on again: the flashy and the penitent, the beaten ones and the wise guys, the hangdog heel thieves and the disdainful coneroos, walking, half crouched, through a downpour of light like men walking through rain. The frayed and the hesitant, the sleek and the bold, the odd fish and the callow youths, the good-humored bindle stiffs and the bitter veterans.”
― Nelson Algren, The Neon Wilderness