‘But,’ Finnerty inquired coolly, ‘Didn't it take some time to get used to being smaller than other people… — Nelson Algren
‘But,’ Finnerty inquired coolly, ‘Didn't it take some time to get used to being smaller than other people after you'd been the biggest thing in sight for so long?’ [...] Finnerty's tone was serene. ‘I don't pretend to compete with you. But Stoodint here now is something else – he'll out-stud any man alive, Big Dad.’ / Schmidt turned on Dove with a swerve of his wheels. ‘Can you do anything I can't do better, bum?’ / ‘I can't do lots of things even able-bodied men can do, mister,’ Dove hurried to say; and even to his own ears that didn't sound quite right. / ‘For example,’ Finnerty helped him, ‘he could never get work as THE LIVING HALF.’
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More from this book
There, in Dockery's Dollhouse [...] a straight-haired flat-chested hard-of-eye hustler called Tough Kitty was trying to get credit for just one little beer. / But the bartender, acting as oddly as , didn't seem to hear. / [...] / So she drew from the pocket of her faded blue jeans a small change-purse and emptied it on the bar: twelve pennies and one nickel. / ‘I got enough for a beer,’ she took count, ‘but not enough to get drunk on.’ And looked left-out of everything.
‘I feel like I been everywhere God got land,’ Dove thought, ‘yet all I found was people with hard ways to go. All I found was troubles 'n degradation. All I found was that those with the hardest ways of all to go were quicker to help others than those with the easiest ways. All I found was two kinds of people. Them that would rather live on the loser's side of the street with the other losers than to win off by theirselves; and them who want to be one of the winners even though the only way left for them to win was over them who have already been whipped. / ‘All I found was men and women, and all the women were fallen. Sports of the world, poor bummies, poor tarts, all they were good for was to draw flies I was told. You could always treat one too good, it was said, but you never could treat one too bad. Yet I wouldn't trade off the worst of the lot for the best of the other kind. I think they were the real salt of the earth.’
Another was an old sad lonesome lecher with a face that had never been up from the cellar, who had nobody's sympathy at all; not even his own. The turnkey had nicknamed him ‘Raincoat’ – which was kinder than what the prisoners had named him. / This ancient simple satyr's offense had been nothing more dreadful than the devising of a time-and-money-saving operation. [...] Here and there, passing some woman who appeared deserving, he would fling the raincoat wide for her amazement and delight, then modestly button himself and modestly hurry on. / Talent can spring up anywhere.
