John Fante
John Fante was an American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter who wrote in the English language.
Born on April 8, 1909, in Boulder, Colorado, Fante attended the University of Colorado and later Long Beach City College. He went on to work as both a literary writer and a screenwriter, producing fiction across several decades of his life.
His notable works include the novels Wait Until Spring, Bandini, Ask the Dust, The Road to Los Angeles, Full of Life, 1933 Was a Bad Year, The Brotherhood of the Grape, West of Rome, and Dreams from Bunker Hill. He also published the short story collection Dago Red. Across these titles, Fante worked in prose forms that ranged from the novel to the short story, and he pursued screenwriting as a distinct professional activity alongside his fiction writing.
Fante died on May 8, 1983, in Woodland Hills, California. His published output, written in English, encompasses novels and short stories that together constitute a substantial body of work, with Dreams from Bunker Hill among the later novels he produced before his death.
Quotes by John Fante
Murderer or bartender or writer, it didn’t matter: his fate was the common fate of all, his finish my finish; and here tonight in this city of darkened windows were other millions like him and like me: as indistinguishable as dying blades of grass. Living was hard enough. Dying was a supreme task.
Then I walked down the street toward Angel’s Flight, wondering what I would do that day. But there was nothing to do, and so I decided to walk around the town.
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.
When your weaknesses are your strenghts, you cry. For crying disconcerts people, they don’t know how to handle it; they are expecting violence and suddenly it vanishes in a pool of tears.
I was a coward. I said it aloud to myself: you are a coward. I didn’t care. It was better to be a live coward than a dead madman.
I was twenty then. What the hell, I used to say, take your time, Bandini. You got ten years to write a book, so take it easy, get out and learn about life, walk the streets. That’s your trouble: your ignorance of life.
We were two miles from Bunker Hill, in the east part of town, in the section of factories and breweries. She.
It harassed him always, that beautiful snow. He could never understand why he didn’t go to California. Yet he stayed in Colorado, in the deep snow, because it was too late now.