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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.

— John Fante Ask the Dust (1939)

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

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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.

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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.

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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.