# Quote — Nelson Algren, A Walk On The Wild Side

> In the cheery old summer of '31 some states were dry and some states were wet. [...] / The Ladder of Success had been inverted, the top was the bottom, and the bottom was the top. Leaders of men still sporting gold watches were lugging baby photographs door to door with their soles flapping. Physicians were out selling skin lighteners and ship captains queued in hope of a cabin boy's mop and pail. / Offices of great fire insurance companies went up in smoke, which seemed no more than just. When the fire department – long unpaid – cleared off, little remained but scorched files, swivel-chairs on which no one would ever swivel again, lovely heaps of frosted glass, and all that mahogany. / All that mahogany that hadn't helped anybody but brokers after all. Then the brokers began jumping off rooftops with no greater consideration for those passing below than they'd had when their luck was running. Emperors of industry snatched all the loose cash on which they could lay hand and made one fast last run. Lawyers sued one another just to keep in practice.

- Author: [Nelson Algren](https://www.leafyquotes.com/nelson-algren.md)
- Book: [A Walk On The Wild Side](https://www.leafyquotes.com/nelson-algren/a-walk-on-the-wild-side.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/A_Walk_on_the_Wild_Side#Chapter_2) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/nelson-algren/a-walk-on-the-wild-side/in-the-cheery

## 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.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/nelson-algren/a-walk-on-the-wild-side/there-in-dockerys.md)

> ‘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.’

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/nelson-algren/a-walk-on-the-wild-side/i-feel-like.md)

> 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.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/nelson-algren/a-walk-on-the-wild-side/another-was-an-old.md)