Nelson Algren Quotes

My demons are not that easy to shake.

There is a dark place calling to me, but I will not go just yet. I know I can't return from it.

At sometime in our lives a devil dwells within us, causes heartbreaks, confusion and troubles, then dies.

So now the devil's in my soul.

My soul is to sell. The dark is too hard to beat 'cause they're calling me.

There's a demon in me, and he's still around. Without the dope, we have a bit more of a chat these days.

Temptation is the devil looking through the keyhole. Yielding is opening the door and inviting him in.

I knuckle down with my demons, and with my weaknesses.

To be honest, I've made a game out of trying to live through my James Dean, Janis Joplin, Freddie Prinze, Jim Morrison period, those demons that we all have that we're either successful or not at making work for us rather than destroy us.

The anguish of the neurotic individual is the same as that of the saint. The neurotic, the saint are engaged in the same battle. Their blood flows from similar wounds. But the first one gasps and the other one gives.

I have had more trouble with myself than with any other man.

It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.

It is hard because I love Cornettos, so that will always be a weakness, and I've realised that bread is my nemesis. I believe bread has been sent to destroy me to the core.

It's curious how we act in moments of personal despair.

I'm such an addictive personality that I can say yes or no.

Oh, I am an angel, though sometimes I wish I was more of a devil.

Only by confronting your demons can you ever hope to conquer them.

I am truly miserable - more so than I like to acknowledge to myself. Pride refuses to aid me. It has brought me into the scrape, and will not help me out of it.

Ten thousand million nightmares, temptation by the score, I used to get so high, and still I wanted more. You think my time is wasted in search of who I am, I tried so hard to kill the boy inside the man.

"Are you a devil?" "I am a man," answered Father Brown gravely; "and therefore have all devils in my heart."

The mind is its own beautiful prisoner. Mind looked long at the sticky moon opening in dusk her new wings then decently hanged himself,one afternoon. The last thing he saw was you naked amid unnaked things.

He who is intoxicated with wine will be sober again in the course of the night, but he who is intoxicated by the cupbearer will not recover his senses until the day of judgement.

When you can stop you don't want to, and when you want to stop, you can't.

The stabbing horror of life is not contained in calamities and disasters, because these things wake one up and one gets very familiar and intimate with them and finally they become tame again. No, it is more like being in a hotel room in Hoboken let us say, and just enough money in one's pocket for another meal.