The Man with the Golden Arm

"Long lonesome shadows of the December tenements that fled the neon carnival below to turn each night toward her for rest. / This was the shadow-gatherers hour: the hour for those all over the earth who had rest neither in sleep nor waking. Some gathered their shadows like memories; but she gathered hers like unborn children to her pale and secret eyes. / [...] They moved toward her then for warmth, they had been feeling unwanted all day. Like everyone else in the world for whom things had gone wrong. They knew that here they would come alive, for here they were loved and wanted at last. She alone knew how lost all shadows felt: it made them the dearer to her own unwanted heart. / To the heart weighed down by its own uselessness. What good is any unwanted heart?"

"For the city too was somehow crippled of late. The city too seemed a little insane. Crippled and caught and done for with everyone in it. No one else was really any better off than herself, she reflected with a childs satisfaction, they had all been twisted about a bit whether they sat in a wheelchair or not. She could tell just by the way once familiar doorways had come to look menacing in the morning light, ready to be slammed in the face of anyone who knocked at all. Nobody was at home to anyone else any more."

"She raised her arms elegantly, like a real lady in a deodorant ad, high over her head. ‘Anyhow it aint red, its just awe-burn. Would you like me wit red hair all over?’ / ‘I like redheads of any color – [...]’"

"‘Im settin here three days now waitin for you, listenin to s go by, countin how many cars it sounds like. You dont know how lonely it gets, waitin for El cars. Frankie, lets both quit stonin ourselves.’ / He didnt know she was crying till her tears touched his lips."

"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."

"Early morning, everyone from the first floor to the fourth up to do an honest days hustling and Louie doing the talking for everyone. ‘My business is everybodys business – informin is a racket like everythin else. Anythin that pays aint nothin to be ashamed of, one rackets as good as the next. A man whos ashamed of his racket is a man whos ashamed of his mother. The only thing a man got a right to be ashamed of these days is bein broke.’"