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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 Ask the Dust (1939)

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More quotes by John Fante

"You ain't gonna live forever, so enjoy it while you can."

The Brotherhood of the Grape (1977)

He closed the door carefully, as though his whole life had been spent in the exact science of closing doors.

Wait Until Spring, Bandini (1938)

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)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: John Fante (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.