The Brotherhood of the Grape Quotes

“Nor did he give a damn for the world either, or the universe, or heaven or hell. But he liked women.”
― John Fante, The Brotherhood of the Grape

“Then it happened. One night as the rain beat on the slanted kitchen roof a great spirit slipped forever into my life. I held his book in my hands and trembled as he spoke to me of man and the world, of love and wisdom, pain and guilt, and I knew I would never be the same. His name was Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky. He knew more of fathers and sons than any man in the world, and of brothers and sisters, priests and rogues, guilt and innocence. Dostoyevsky changed me. The Idiot, The Possessed, The Brothers Karamazov, The Gambler. He turned me inside out. I found I could breathe, could see invisible horizons. The hatred for my father melted. I loved my father, poor, suffering, haunted wretch. I loved my mother too, and all my family. It was time to become a man, to leave San Elmo and go out into the world. I wanted to think and feel like Dostoyevsky. I wanted to write.
The week before I left town the draft board summoned me to Sacramento for my physical. I was glad to go. Someone other than myself could make my decisions. The army turned me down. I had asthma. Inflammation of the bronchial tubes.
“That’s nothing. I’ve always had it.”
“See your doctor.”
I got the needed information from a medical book at the public library. Was asthma fatal? It could be. And so be it. Dostoyevsky had epilepsy, I had asthma. To write well a man must have a fatal ailment. It was the only way to deal with the presence of death.”
― John Fante, The Brotherhood of the Grape

“It is better to die of drink then to die of thirst.”
― John Fante, The Brotherhood of the Grape

“When your weakness are your strengths, you cry.”
― John Fante, The Brotherhood of the Grape

“Nobody crossed him without a battle. He disliked almost everything, particularly his wife, his children, his neighbours, his church, his priest, his town, his state, his country, and the country from which he emigrated. Nor did he give a damn for the world either, or the sun or the stars, or the universe, or heaven or hell. But he liked women.”
― John Fante, The Brotherhood of the Grape

“By Franklin Roosevelt's time Hilda Dietrich was forty, a housewife and mother, married to the Reverend Herman Dietrich, pastor of the Lutheran church. Like her husband, who said as much from his pulpit, Mrs Dietrich was fully persuaded that Italians were creatures with African blood, that all Italians carried knives, and that the country was in the clutches of the Mafia. It was no extremist theory. A lot of worried people believed it, particularly Italian-Americans.”
― John Fante, The Brotherhood of the Grape

“Leave town, Henry. Leave before they trap you”
― John Fante, The Brotherhood of the Grape

“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.”
― John Fante, The Brotherhood of the Grape

“When your weaknesses are your strengths, 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.”
― John Fante, The Brotherhood of the Grape

“The kitchen. La cucina, the true mother country, this warm cave of the good witch deep in the desolate land of loneliness, with pots of sweet potions bubbling over the fire, a cavern of magic herbs, rosemary and thyme and sage and oregano, balm of lotus that brought sanity to lunatics, peace to the troubled, joy to the joyless, this small twenty-by-twenty world, the altar a kitchen range, the magic circle a checkered tablecloth where the children fed, the old children, lured back to their beginnings, the taste of mother's milk still haunting their memories, fragrance in the nostrils, eyes brightening, the wicked world receding as the old mother witch sheltered her brood from the wolves outside.”
― John Fante, The Brotherhood of the Grape

“I figli erano i chiodi che lo tenevano crocefisso a mia madre.”
― John Fante, The Brotherhood of the Grape