"My father was teaching me his trade. I was his son and he was showing me how to write the way his own father from Torricella Peligna had shown him, as a boy, how to work a wall of stone or lay a row of brick. I was learning how to build books. Watching a master at work. Those would be the most important days of my life."

“Dan Fante: This is my life”

“Dan Fante, Breakfast - c.2012”

“What amused him most was another human's discomfort.”

“LARB interviews Dan Fante - April 2013”

“The problem that your type has is that you don't listen and you keep insisting on operating by your own rules. Only you push and shove and wiggle and spit and outsmart everybody. You're a lover of man and beast alike, as long as you're getting your way. With people like you, Bruno, pain is the only teacher. Failure. No one can tell you that you're about to put your hand in a buzz saw. But it's only when you, yourself, see fingertips flying past your eyes, and watch your arm being chopped into a bloody stump that you'll be able to stop. You hit all walls at full speed. That's what I mean by high maintenance.”

““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.”