Dan Fante Quotes & Sayings

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. — Dan Fante

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. — Dan Fante

I was a degenerate, with an insatiable capacity for perversion. Incapable of change. I could do anything except not drink. — 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. — Dan Fante

no wonder i let queers suck my cock — Dan Fante

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. — Dan Fante

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. — Dan Fante

...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. — Dan Fante

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? — Dan Fante

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. — Dan Fante

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. — Dan Fante

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. — Dan Fante