Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

English Italiano Polski עברית Français Português فارسی Español 中文 Русский Deutsch العربية हिन्दी 日本語 Ελληνικά Latina

John Fante

117 quotes

“No chance to speak, she was over me again, clinging like a wet vine, her tongue like a frightened snake's head, searching my mouth.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Then she came out of the kitchen with a glass of milk in her hand. "Here," she offered. "A cool drink." But it wasn't cool at all, it was almost hot, and there was a yellowish scum on the top, and sipping it I tasted her lips and the strong food she ate, a taste of rye bread and Camembert cheese.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But the room seemed so poor, pleading for warmth and joy. Vera Rivken's room. She had been nice to Arturo Bandini, and she was poor. I took the small roll from my pocket, peeled off two one dollar bills, and laid them on the table. Then I walked down the stairs, my lungs full of air, elated, my muscles so much stronger than ever before.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It crept upon me--the restlessness, the loneliness. What was the matter...Then it came to me like crashing and thunder, like death and destruction. I got up from the counter and walked away in fear, walking fast down the boardwalk, passing people who seemed strange and ghostly: the world seemed a myth, a transparent plane, and all things upon it were here for only a little while...”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sick in my soul I tried to face the ordeal of seeking forgiveness. From whom? What God, what Christ? They were myths I once believed, and now they were beliefs I felt were myths.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now there were screams. then dust. Then crumbling and roaring. I turned round and round in a circle. I had done this...You did it, Arturo. This is the wrath of God...Great clouds of dust...Up in that room on that bed you did it.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An old woman wept among the white faces. Two men carrying a body. An old dog crawling on his belly, dragging his hind legs. Several bodies in the corner of the lot, beside a shed, blood-soaked sheets covering them. An ambulance.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Far down the street I saw the building where Vera lived. Hanging from the wall, like a man crucified, was the bed.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“the city was the same, but I was afraid. The streets lurked with danger. The tall buildings forming black canyons were traps to kill you when the earth shook. The pavement might open. The street cars might topple.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I didn't care. It was better to be a live coward than a dead madman. These people walking in and out of huge concrete buildings--someone should warn them. It would come again...Los Angeles was doomed. It was a city with a curse upon it.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I saw the earth open like a huge mouth, then close again over the paved street. An old man was trapped by the foot. I ran to him, told him to be brave while I hacked the pavement with a fireman's axe. But I was too late. The vise tightened, bit his leg off at the knee. I carried him away. His knee is still there, a bloody souvenir sticking out of the earth.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The world was dust, and dust it would become...I gave up cigarets for a few days. I bought a new rosary. I poured nickels and dimes into the Poor Box. I pitied the world.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“His meat craze had got out of hand. All day I heard him frying cheap steaks, the odor creeping under my door. It gave me a mad desire for meat...But he never offered me so much as the scraps from his plate.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That night he walked into my room. He sat on the bed, his long arms dangling to the floor...Then he began on the subject of meat. "How would you like a big thick steak?" he said, his lips loose.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I watched him tiptoe toward the barn door. I cursed him and waited tensely. In a little while I heard the mooing of a cow. It was a piteous cry. Then I heard a thud and a scuffle of hoofs. Out of the barn door came Hellfrick. Across his shoulder lay a dark mass, weighing him down. Behind him, mooing continually, a cow followed...It was a calf, blood spurting from a gash between the ears...I was sick, very sick. It was plain murder.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All the way home Hellfrick was exultant, but the steering wheel was sticky with blood, and once or twice I thought I heard the calf kicking in the back seat...On bunker Hill we turned down our alley and pulled up at the parking space adjacent the hotel wall. Hellfrick got out. "Now I'm going to give you a lesson in butchering.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I looked down at the poor calf. Its hide was spotted black and white and it had the most delicate ankles. From the slightly open mouth there appeared a pink tongue. I closed my eyes and ran out of Hellfrick's room and threw myself on the floor in my room. I lay there and shuddered, thinking of the old cow alone in the field in the moonlight, old cow mooing for her calf. Murder!”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Another magazine wanted the Long Lost Hills in digest form. A hundred dollars. I was rich again. A time for amends, for righting the past. I sent my mother five dollars.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“God Almighty, dear God, good to me, gave me a sweet tongue, and these sad and lonely folk will hear me and they shall be happy.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every move she made, the soft turn of her neck, the large breasts swelling under the smock, her fine hands upon the bed, the fingers spread out, these things disturbed me, a sweet painful heaviness dragging me into stupor. Then the sound of her voice, restrained, hinting of mockery, a voice that talked to my blood and bones.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All at once I loathed her, because she had hurt me. This girl! She had torn up my sonnet by Dowson, she had shown my telegram to everybody in the Columbia Buffet. She had made a fool of me at the beach. She suspected my virility, and her suspicion was the same as the scorn in her eyes. I watched her face and lips and thought how it would be a pleasure to strike her, send my fist with all force against her nose and lips.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mean?" I said. "My dear girl, I am equally fond of man and beast alike. There is not the slightest drop of enmity in my system. After all, you can't be mean and still be a great writer.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The trouble with trouble was that trouble was looking for Coldwater Gatling. They don't like Texas Rangers down in Arizona, consequently Coldwater Gatling figured shoot first and find out who you killed afterwards. That's how they did it in the Lone Star State where men were men and the women didn't mind cooking for hard-riding straight-shooting people like Coldwater Gatling, the toughest man in leather they had down there.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I turned around and saw the crease on the bed where Camilla had been seated, the sensuous contour where her thighs and hips had sunk beneath the softness of the blue chenille bedspread. then I forgot Sammy, and wild with longing I threw myself upon my knees before the spot and kissed it reverently.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dear Sammy: That little whore was here tonight; you know Sammy, the little Greaser dame with a wonderful figure and a mind for a moron...having read the bile your manuscripts contain, let me speak for the world at large and say at once that your departure is everybody's good fortune. You can't write, Sammy...I speak for all sensible, civilized men when I urge you to burn this mass of literary manure and thereafter stay away from pen and ink.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The desert was always there, a patient white animal, waiting for men to die, for civilizations to flicker and pass into the darkness...All the evil of the world seemed not evil at all, but inevitable and good and part of that endless struggle to keep the desert down.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You don't understand Mexican women. They don't like to be treated like human beings. If you're nice to them, they walk all over you.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You try so hard to be an American," I said. "why do you do that? Take a look at yourself"..."And all that paint on your face. You look awful--a cheap imitation of an American. You look frowsy. If I were a Mexican I'd knock your head off. You're a disgrace to your people.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She was forcing it with her scorn, the kiss she gave me, the hard curl of her lips, the mockery of her eyes, until I was like a man made of wood and there was no feeling within me except terror and a fear of her, a sense that her beauty was too much, that she was so much more beautiful than I, deeper rooted than I. She made me a stranger unto myself, she was all of those calm nights and tall eucalyptus trees, the desert stars, that land and sky, that fog outside, and I had come there with no purpose save to be a mere writer, to get money, to make a name for myself and all that piffle.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She kissed me, author of The Little Dog Laughed. Then she took my wrist with her two hands. She pressed her lips into the palm of my hand. She placed my hand upon her bosom between her breasts. She turned her lips toward my face and waited. And Arturo Bandini, the great author dipped deep into his colorful imagination, romantic Arturo Bandini, just chock-full of clever phrases, and he said, weakly, kittenishly, "Hello.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She sat there, the white of saliva at the ends of her mouth, her teeth gritted, her hands pulling at her long hair, her face fighting off a scream, but it didn't matter; she could scream if she liked, for Arturo Bandini wasn't queer, there was nothing at all wrong with Arturo Bandini; why, he had a passion like six men, that boy, he had felt it coming to the surface: some guy, mighty writer, mighty lover; right with the world, right with his prose.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ah, Los Angeles! Dust and fog of your lonely streets. I am no longer lonely. Just you wait, all of you ghosts of this room, just you wait, because it will happen yet, and that Camilla, she can have her Sammy in the desert, with his cheap short stories and stinking prose, but wait until she has a taste of me, because it will happen, as sure as there's a God in heaven.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Then she tried to show me how to hold the gun. I jerked it away from her, flung the barrel recklessly in all directions.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A bell was supposed to ring when the bull's eye was hit. Not a sound. I emptied the gun, sniffed the tart stench of powder, and made a face. Tim and Camilla laughed at the sissy. By now a crowd had gathered on the sidewalk. They all shared Camilla's disgust, for it was a contagious thing, and I felt it too.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Still sneering, she looked at me quickly, and let out the clutch. I was thrown against the seat, then against the windshield. We were jammed between two other cars. She banged into one, and then into the other, her way of letting me know what a fool I had been.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I stepped inside. It was almost pitch dark, smelling of old underwear and the sleep of a sick body. A feeble light came from a crack in the window covered by a slice of sacking. Before I could stop him, Sammy had bolted the door...Vapors spilled from our mouths in the cold air. "Let her in, Sammy," I said. "What the hell.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Camilla cooked breakfast for us, and we ate from plates on our laps. The fare was fried corn meal and bacon and eggs. Sammy ate with the peculiar robustness of unhealthy people. After the meal, Camilla gathered the tin plates and washed them. Then she had her own breakfast, seated in a far corner, quiet except for the sound of her fork against the tin plate.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We drove into the Los Angeles Black Belt, Central Avenue, night clubs, abandoned apartment houses, broken-down business houses, the forlorn street of poverty for the Negro and swank for the whites.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Far away like frightened birds, the echo of our feet floated through the upper floors. We climbed three flights of stairs and proceeded the length of another hall. At the end was a door. The Negro opened it.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So this was where she lived! I smelled it, touched it with my fingers, walked through it with my feet. It was as I had imagined. This was her home. Blindfolded I could have acknowledged the place, for her odor possessed it, her fevered, lost existence proclaimed it as part of a hopeless scheme. An apartment on Temple Street, and apartment in Los Angeles.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The dark corridor of that Central Avenue Hotel, the sinister Negro, the black room and the hopheads, and now the girl who loved a man who hated her. It was all of the same cloth, perverse, drugged in fascinating ugliness. Midnight on Temple Street, a can of marijuana between us. She lay there, her long fingers dangling to the carpet, waiting, listless, tired.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We smoked them down until they burned our fingertips. Then I rolled two more. In the middle of the second it began to come, the floating, the wafting away from the earth, the joy and triumph of a man over space, the extraordinary sense of power.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When it was all gone, the dream of floating toward bursting stars, and the flesh returned to hold my blood in its prosaic channels, when the room returned, the dirty sordid room, the vacant meaningless ceiling, the weary wasted world, I felt nothing but the old sense of guilt, the sense of crime and violation, the sin of destruction.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I opened the door, and there he stood, a telegraph boy. I signed for the telegram, sat on the bed, and wondered if the wine had finally got the Old Man's heart. The telegram said: your book accepted mailing contract today. Hackmuth. That was all. I let the paper float to the carpet. I just sat there. Then I got down on the floor and began kissing the telegram. I crawled under the bed and just lay there. I did not need the sunshine anymore. Nor the earth, nor heaven. I just lay there, happy to die. Nothing else could happen to me. My life was over.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I tried the door. It opened, darkness inside, and I switched on the light. She lay there in the Murphy bed. Her face was the face of an old rose pressed and dried in a book, yellowish, with only the eyes to prove there was life in it. The room stank. The blinds were down, the door opened with difficulty until I kicked away the rug against the crack.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I prowled the city with my Ford: I found mysterious alleys, lonely trees, rotting old houses out of a vanished past. Day and night I lived in my Ford, pausing only long enough to order a hamburger and a cup of coffee at strange roadside cafes.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She rose and looked at me with delirious black eyes, black and wanton and in a dream, her neck stretched and defining the bulging cords at her throat. she had nothing to say with her lips, but the ghastly cast of her face, the teeth too white and too big now, the frightened smile, these spoke too loudly of the horror shrouding her days and nights...As I walked toward the bed, she pulled up her knees, slipping into a crouched frightened position, as though she expected me to strike her.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I didn't ask any questions. Everything I wanted to know was written in tortured phrases across the desolation of her face. It didn't look like insanity to me. It looked like fear, the terrible fear screaming from her big hungered eyes, alert now from the drug.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All at once I was full of plans. Laguna Beach! That was the place for her. It was winter now, and we could get a place cheap. I could take care of her and get started on another book. I had an idea for a new book. We didn't have to be married, brother and sister was alright with me.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Willie was sound asleep in her lap, but he sucked her little finger. South of Long Beach we stopped at a drugstore and bought a bottle with a nipple, and a bottle of milk. Willie's eyes opened when she put the nipple to his mouth. He fell to his task like a fiend. Camilla lifted her arms high, ran her fingers through her hair, and yawned with pleasure.”
John Fante (1909–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source