21 quotes
A man who won't demean himself for a dollar is a phoney to my way of thinking.
What country is there for a white man who isn't white?
The clock in the room above the Safari told only Junkie Time.
The Man with the Golden Arm (1949)
A writer who knows what he is doing isn't doing very much.
I am the penny whistle of American literature.
Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never play cards with a man named Doc. And never lay down with a woman who's got more troubles than you.
Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.
A Walk on the Wild Side (1956)
Never on the earth of man has he lived so tidily as here amidst such psychological disorder.
Nonconformity (1953)
You don't write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich.
Nonconformity (1953)
A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery.
Nonconformity (1953)
Life is hard by the yard, son. But you don't have to do it by the yard. By the inch it's a cinch. And money can't buy everything. For example: poverty.
A Walk on the Wild Side (1956)
Well, here you get to be a writer when there's absolutely nothing else you can do.
The Art of Fiction No. 11 (1955)
[Chicago is] the only major city in the country where you can easily buy your way out of a murder rap.
The less he sees of other writers the more of a writer he will ultimately become. When he sees scarcely anyone except other writers, he is ready for New York.
Nonconformity (1953)
I haven't consciously tried to develop [a style]. 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.
The Art of Fiction No. 11 (1955)
[About his legacy:] 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.
I always think of writing as a physical thing. I'm not trying to generalize, it just happens to be that way with me.
The Art of Fiction No. 11 (1955)
Our myths are so many, our vision so dim, our self-deception so deep and our smugness so gross that scarcely any way now remains of reporting the American Century except from behind the billboards.
Nonconformity (1953)
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-colored walls of [an addict]'s terrible pit.
The Man with the Golden Arm (1949)
Thinking of Melville, thinking of Poe, thinking of Mark Twain and Vachel Lindsay, thinking of Jack London and Tom Wolfe, one begins to feel there is almost no way of becoming a creative writer in America without being a loser.