Ah, Evelyn and Vivian, I love you both, I love you for your sad lives, the empty misery of your coming home at dawn. You too are alone, but you are not like Arturo Bandini, who is neither fish, fowl nor good red herring. So have your champagne, because I love you both, and you too, Vivian, even if your mouth looks like it had been dug out with raw fingernails and your old child's eyes swim in blood written like mad sonnets.

Almighty God, I am sorry I am now an atheist, but have You read Nietzsche?

For your information, a good novel can change the world. Keep that in mind before you attempt to sit down at a typewriter. Never waste time on something you don't believe in yourself.

So it happened at last: I was about to become a thief, a cheap milk-stealer. Here was your lash-in-the-pen genius, your one story-writer: a thief.

Like my father, I am very impatient. I have a strong bullshit detector. I may finish one book in twenty that I have started.

If there is work there is warmth, that when a man has freedom of movement it is enough, for then his blood is hot too

When I go into a bookstore I always look for books by John Fante. If they are out-of-stock on one of his titles, I tell the clerk to order what is missing. I do it because I want people to read my father's work.