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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

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The Impossible Generalized Man

Nelson Algren

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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.

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Yet Once You've Come To Be Part Of This Particular Patch, You'll Never Love Another. Like Loving A Woman With A Broken Nose, You May Well Find Lovelier Lovelies. But Never A Lovely So Real.

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Any Writer Who Knows What He's Doing Isn't Doing Very Much.

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.

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.

... Chicago Divided Your Heart. Leaving You Loving The Joint For Keeps. Yet Knowing It Never Can Love You.

The Only Way I Could Finish A Book And Get A Plot Was Just To Keep Making It Longer Until Something Happens.

I'm Not Against Sentimentality. I Think You Need It. I Mean, I Don't Think You Get A True Picture Of People Without It In Writing... It's A Kind Of Poetry, It's An Emotional Poetry, And, To Bring It Back To The Literary Scene, I Don't Think Anything Is True That Doesn't Have It, That Doesn't Have Poetry In It.

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.

It Is Strange How Fragile This Man-creature Is.....in One Second He's Just Garbage. Garbage, That's All.

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-coloured Walls.

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. A Certain Ruthlessness And A Sense Of Alienation From Society Is As Essential To Creative Writing As It Is To Armed Robbery.

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.

There's People In Hell Who Want Ice Water.

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I Don't Recommend Being A Bachelor, But It Helps If You Want To Write.

The Hard Necessity Of Bringing The Judge On The Bench Down Into The Dock Has Been The Peculiar Responsibility Of The Writer In All Ages Of Man.

...he Said, With Sort Of A Little Derisive Smile, "how Can You Walk Down The Street With All This Stuff Going On Inside You?" I Said, "i Don't Know How You Can Walk Down The Street With Nothing Going On Inside You.

To Literary Critics A Book Is Assumed To Be Guilty Until It Proves Itself Innocent.

When We Get More Houses Than We Can Live In, More Cars Than We Can Ride In, More Food Than We Can Eat Ourselves, The Only Way Of Getting Richer Is By Cutting Off Those Who Don't Have Enough.

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Broken Promises

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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.

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A Book, A True Book, Is The Writer's Confessional. For, Whether He Would Have It So Or Not, He Is Betrayed, Directly Or Indirectly, By His Characters, Into Presenting Publicly His Innermost Feelings.

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