The Man with the Golden Arm Quotes
Realist novels, American novels
Top Quotes
“The man with the golden arm.”
“‘Lies are just a poor man's pennies,’ Violet told her.”
“‘He ain't no moron,’ the veteran confided to Record Head, ‘he's a moroff. You know; more off than on.’”
“Beneath the sink Rumdum slept with one ear alert for the coffeepot's first perk. Vi was trying to wean him off beer with coffee.”
“The analyst at the people's clinic was young, pure in heart, and dressed in theories as spotless as his own chaste white jacket.”
“In the corner, beneath a frosted bulb, Pig sat looking out upon that dark and wavering shore which only the eyeless may see and only the dead may wander.”
“‘She got too big a heart, that girl,’ Antek explained of Molly when John had left. ‘A guy can walk into her heart with army boots on.’”
“The Man With the Golden Arm, published in 1949, was the winner of the first National Book Award for fiction, and it may be the best book they ever gave it to.”
“The growing light began making a stairway to nowhere out of the shadows of the bars: a stairwell lit feebly by the reflecting mirror's glow as it competed with the lightening day.”
“When he wakened he would see her in the corner where the light and darkness met, half her face in the fading shadows of Saturday night and half in Sunday morning's rain-washed light.”
“Pig wore a creamy, dreamy smirk to veil a long-standing grudge against everybody. He could smile like a chicken-fed tomcat while wishing everyone bad luck without exception.”
“‘You got somebody's legs you want bust, spigothead? T'ree-fifty fer one 'n two fer five – you save a deuce gettin' 'em both done at once 'n it's easier on the mark, too. He oney got to go to the hospital once, my way.’”
“‘It's all in the wrist 'n I got the touch,’ Frankie was fond of boasting of his nerveless hands and steady eye. ‘I never get nowheres but I pay my own fare all the way.’ Frankie was regular.”
“In 1949 came his first masterpiece, The Man with the Golden Arm. This story of a Chicago junkie trying to go straight was an immediate triumph. "OK, kid," Hemingway privately noted in his copy of the book, "you beat Dostoevsky."”
“Frankie studied the shivering punk. ‘Don't shake,’ he commanded. ‘When you get the shakes in my business you're through. Steady hand 'n steady eye is what does it. [...] Frankie Machine. That's me – the kid with the golden arm.’”
“She raised her arms elegantly, like a real lady in a deodorant ad, high over her head. ‘Anyhow it ain't red, it's just awe-burn. Would you like me wit' red hair all over?’ / ‘I like redheads of any color – [...]’”
“For those nearest our hearts are the ones most likely to tread upon them. What she could not gain through love she sought to possess by mockery. He was too dear to her: into everything he did she must read some secret hatred of herself.”
“My wife only sleeps with her friends and she don't have a enmy in the world. Call her at Madison 1-6971 and have yourselfs one hell of a time. [...] Girls who would and girls who wouldn't. If they did they were no good and if they didn't what good were they?”
“As the fever lowered Frankie dreamed of someone folding and refolding bundles of newspapers right beside his cot and forced himself awake to see who it was this time. / Only the old woman of the wind, there on the other side of the pane, wrapping the great sheets of the rain.”