A Walk On The Wild Side (novel)

A Walk On The Wild Side (novel)

A Walk on the Wild Side is a 1956 novel by Nelson Algren, most often quoted as the source for Algren's "three rules of life": "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."

Algren noted, "The book asks why lost people sometimes develop into greater human beings than those who have never been lost in their whole lives."

Read more about A Walk On The Wild Side (novel):  Plot Summary, Literary Debt, Film Adaptation, References in Other Works

Famous quotes containing the words walk, wild and/or side:

    It was common practice for me to take my children with me whenever I went shopping, out for a walk in a white neighborhood, or just felt like going about in a white world. The reason was simple enough: if a black man is alone or with other black men, he is a threat to whites. But if he is with children, then he is harmless, adorable.
    Gerald Early (20th century)

    And graven with diamonds in letters plain
    There is written her fair neck round about:
    “Noli me tangere for Caesar’s I am,
    And wild for to hold though I seem tame.”
    Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503?–1542)

    As a particularly dramatic gesture, he throws wide his arms and whacks the side of the barn with the heavy cane he uses to stab at contesting bidders. With more vehemence than grammatical elegance, he calls upon the great god Caveat Emptor to witness with what niggardly stinginess these flinty sons of Scotland make cautious offers for what is beyond any question the finest animal ever beheld.
    —Administration in the State of Arka, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)