21 quotes
I pulled the huge door open and it gave a little cry like weeping. Above the altar sputtered the blood-red eternal light, illuminating in crimson shadow the quiet of almost two thousand years.
Ask the Dust (1939)
Dear little Vivian, all the way from the clean fields of Minnesota, and not a Swede either, and almost a virgin too, just a few men short of being a virgin.
Ask the Dust (1939)
Far down the street I saw the building where Vera lived. Hanging from the wall, like a man crucified, was the bed.
Ask the Dust (1939)
She watched me like a prize dog, and Solomon watched her like a criminal.
Ask the Dust (1939)
You are a coward, Bandini, a traitor to your soul, a feeble liar before your weeping Christ. This is why you write, this is why it would be better if you died.
Ask the Dust (1939)
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.
Ask the Dust (1939)
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.
Ask the Dust (1939)
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.
Ask the Dust (1939)
Then she tried to show me how to hold the gun. I jerked it away from her, flung the barrel recklessly in all directions.
Ask the Dust (1939)
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.
Ask the Dust (1939)
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.
Ask the Dust (1939)
I don't remember what I did after I left her. Maybe I went up to Benny Cohen's room over the Grand Central Market. He had a wooden leg with a little door in it. Inside the door were marijuana cigarets.
Ask the Dust (1939)
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.
Ask the Dust (1939)
I sat before my typewriter and the great awful void descended, and I beat my head with my fists, put a pillow under my aching buttocks and made little noises of agony.
Ask the Dust (1939)
And here was another place and another girl. Oh, how lonely she was, from away back in Minnesota. A good family too. Sure, honey. Tell my tired ears about your good family.
Ask the Dust (1939)
Come down out of the skies, you God, come on down and I'll hammer your face all over the city of Los Angeles, you miserable unpardonable prankster. If it wasn't for you, this woman would not be so maimed, and neither would the world, and if it wasn't for you I could have had Camilla Lopez down at the beach, but no!
Ask the Dust (1939)
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.
Ask the Dust (1939)
I drew my hands over her belly and legs, felt my own desire, searched foolishly for my passion, strained for it while she waited, rolled and tore my hair and begged for it, but there was none, there was none at all, only the retreat to Hackmuth's letter and thoughts that remained to be written, but no lust, only fear of her, and shame and humiliation.
Ask the Dust (1939)
"those huaraches--do you have to wear them, Camilla? Do you have to emphasize the fact that you always were and always will be a filthy little Greaser?"
Ask the Dust (1939)
A cop won't pick you up for vagrancy in Los Angeles if you wear a fancy polo shirt and a pair of sunglasses. But if there is dust on your shoes and that sweater you wear is thick like the sweaters they wear in the snow countries, he'll grab you.
Ask the Dust (1939)