Quotes by Dan Fante
“I think my
strength comes from being an insane drunk. Near death. Wanting death like a
lover every day for years. My talent comes from madness - having survived
madness.”
“We're fat,
we're greedy, and we don't give a shit. Our religion is TV. Our saviour is Bill
Gates. We've learned our lessons well. We know how to put number one first.”
“My secret
weapon is my anger. That's what stimulates me as an artist. I want change. I
want it yesterday. I'm pissed off at America. Society. American movies.
American TV. American culture. American politicians. Capitalism. I'm a little
like my old man in that way only I'm a recovered drunk. He wasn't. I should
have been dead years ago like my brother but somehow I dodged the bullet and it
gave me something to say. Impatience and rage are always just beneath the
surface for me.”
“I was a
degenerate, with an insatiable capacity for perversion. Incapable of change. I
could do anything except not drink.”
“...man can
survive ...he can kill and be twisted and broken and desperate and insane and
fuck barnyard pets in the dark and wear a dress if he chooses, and hate and
destroy everything that's beautiful, and wish for death for himself and others
with every breath, and still be a perfect child of God.”
“All
American politicians are bought and paid for by American lobbyists. We no
longer have representative government here. We breed monsters like Kissinger
and Nixon and Ronnie Reagan. Our senate and congress are run by pay-offs and
special interest money. And the fun part is that most Americans are asleep
about it. Give 'em a new SUV and a good J-Lo or Tom Cruise kung-fu flick and a
few jolly abortion clinic bombing news clips on the six o'clock news and
everybody seems to stay content. Wasn't it Churchill that said any society gets
exactly the government it deserves?”
“Dear God:
Please help me to know what the fuck to do with my life and how to fix it.”
“Organized
religion is horseshit. Spirituality -- the spirituality that I've come to know
and experience -- has nothing to do with religion. Were it not for my
relationship with a God of my experience I would be dead. Actually I did die.
Now I'm this other guy with a pencil in one hand and a bullhorn in the other.”
“no wonder
i let queers suck my cock”
“The
British are civilized. People still read and some conversations can be
interesting. By contrast American are fat and stupid and so thoroughly
brain-blurred and over-sold by our culture that there's a numbing,
unapologetic, arrogance and desperation about us. In fact, I've just defined
the perfect consumer.”
“What I
want to say here is that there is a place beyond control and beyond concern
that people can go, where the values and the needs of everyday life change
completely. Where what matters is moment-to-moment survival to avoid mind
pain.”
“The passion has never left me. I live as two people - myself, Dan Fante, and Bruno Dante or Mickey Di Salvo, or whoever I say I am in one of my books. I can tap that Bruno character any time I need to. He lives inside me like a quiet, simmering pool of magma. Years ago I stopped feeding him with booze and he was kind enough to stop trying to kill me. That's our truce.”
“My dad,
the man I loved most in the world, a man who refused to compromise himself for
anyone, the man who had showed me by example what it was like to be a true
artist, was gone. We had become a loving father and son after a rocky
thirty-year start. John Fante’s gift to me was his ambition, his brilliance,
and his pure writer’s heart. He had begun life with a drunken, self-hating
father, backing out of the hell of poverty and prejudice. Now he was ending it
as the best example of courage and humility I had ever known. John Fante was my
hero.”
“There is
an immutable law that wherever cops congregate, more cops must join in.”
“Praizzzze
Geeezus!”
“Quitting
booze is one thing. Living with my brain sober is another.”
“On the
street, on my way to the store, I had an insight, a flash that penetrated my
understanding. My real difficulty—my problem—wasn’t my depressions or my
drinking or my job failures or even the unarticulated fear that I was a fucking
insane whack. My problem was people. And they were located everywhere”
“One day at
a time. Fake it ’til you make it.”
“Because I
have to treat the mental part of my disease. Quitting booze is one thing.
Living with my brain sober is another.”
“Nothing equals a good dump. To my way of thinking taking a decent shit is a life-affirming experience.”
“This
nonsense about writers who are boozers and conceive their best work while
half-jacked is simply crap. No writer can write drunk. It’s impossible.”
“Fake it ’til you make it.”
Tomadas de Goodreads.
