Quotes from John Fante

The intelligent man makes certain reservations as to the choice of his listeners.

Living was hard enough. Dying was a supreme task.

Resucitan los muertos? Los libros dicen que no, la noche grita que sí

The cricket was no more, but the power of love had found its way, and I was again myself and no longer a cricket, I was Arturo Bandini, and the elm tree yonder was Miss Hopkins, and I got to my knees and put my arms around the tree, kissing it for love everlasting, tearing the bark with my teeth and spitting it on the lawn.

Are the dead restored? The books say no, the night shouts yes

The celestial hypothesis is sheer propaganda formulated by the haves to delude the havenots.

There came over me a terrifying sense of understanding about the meaning and the pathetic destiny of men. The desert was always there, a patient white animal, waiting for men to die, for civilizations to flicker and pass into the darkness.

It is the persistent delusion of an hoodwinked mankind.

They were myths I once believed, and now they were beliefs I felt were myths.

By Franklin Roosevelt's time Hilda Dietrich was forty, a housewife and mother, married to the Reverend Herman Dietrich, pastor of the Lutheran church. Like her husband, who said as much from his pulpit, Mrs Dietrich was fully persuaded that Italians were creatures with African blood, that all Italians carried knives, and that the country was in the clutches of the Mafia. It was no extremist theory. A lot of worried people believed it, particularly Italian-Americans.

Bandini looked at a patch of blue in the east. 'Pretty soon we'll have spring', he said. 'We sure will!

She came with her eyes blacker and wider than ever, walking towards me on soft feet, smiling mysteriously, until I thought I would faint from the pounding of my heart.

When your weaknesses are your strenghts, you cry. For crying disconcerts people, they don't know how to handle it; they are expecting violence and suddenly it vanishes in a pool of tears.

Leave town, Henry. Leave before they trap you

so let the earthquake come, let it bury me and my sins, so who the hell cares? No good to God or man, die one way or another, a quake or a hanging, it didn't matter why or when or how.

My dear girl. I am equally fond of man and beast alike. There is not the slightest drop of enmity in my system.

the world was so big, so full of things I could master.

The Church must go, it is the haven of the booboisie, of boobs and bounders and all brummagem mountebanks.

Speak to me, Rosa. Look this way just once, over here Rosa, where I am watching.

With my last nickel I went there for a cup of coffee.

I was satisfied that I had done my best. She was insane.

What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?

So what's the use of repentence, and what do you care for goodness, and what if you should die in a quake, so who the hell cares? So I walked downtown, so these were the high buildings, so let the earthquake come, let it bury me and my sins, so who the hell cares? No good to God or man, die one way or another, a quake or a hanging, it didn't matter why or when or how.

When your weaknesses are your strengths, you cry. For crying disconcerts people, they don't know how to handle it; they are expecting violence and suddenly it vanishes in a pool of tears.