If you write something, and you believe in it, you'd like to see sixty million people moved by it. Nelson Algren More Quotes by Nelson Algren More Quotes From Nelson Algren 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 the more I see of them, the more I'm sure it's the wrong direction. It isn't the place where you learn to write. Nelson Algren directionfeelingplaceyou I've always felt strongly that a writer shouldn't be engaged with other writers, or with people who make books, or even with people who read them. I think the farther away you get from the literary traffic, the closer you are to sources. I mean, a writer doesn't really live; he observes. Nelson Algren livethinkyoupeople I don't think the isolation of the American writer is a tradition; it's more that, geographically, he just is isolated, unless he happens to live in New York City. But I don't suppose there's a small town around the country that doesn't have a writer. Nelson Algren livecitythinktradition I don't think I've ever been either militant or profound as an anti-Fascist. When the issue has come up, when certain things have come up, and I've been called on to express - literally, when I've been cornered, then I take a left-wing stand. Nelson Algren standthingsthinkup I am against censorship. I don't think there is anything more stupid than censorship. Nelson Algren i-amthinkcensorshipstupid Since I'm essentially optimistic, I can't imagine a world in which man is totally decimated or degraded. Nelson Algren whichmanimagineworld I'd put the ninety-nine billion dollars - whatever it is - that's being appropriated for the Air Force and the Navy, and I'd put it into schools. I'd put it into traveling scholarships. Nelson Algren whateverbeingnavyforce New York is the place where they bind books and write blurbs and arrange the publicity and print the galleys... But Chicago is the place where the book is lived out before it is bound and the song is sung before it is recorded. Nelson Algren newplacesongbook
