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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Literary criticism is generally bunk. Nonsense. Usually based on self-serving post-intellectual bullshit.