“Eventually, I stopped dressing like I was a Disney character, but the desire to live the life of a fairytale princess never really left me.”

“Patrick walked in dressed in an utterly unmentionable bathrobe. I was pretty sure that Disney wouldn’t have approved of what their cartoon characters were doing on that dark blue satin background. On the other hand, I was really glad he had on the bathrobe.”

“Fairytales can never be compared to real life, but life can sometimes be like a fairytale.”

“Every single morning I wake with a bang,' he said. 'It's as though the fact that I am alive is injected into me; I am a character in a fairytale, bursting with life.”

“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.”

“The old tree brooded over me silently, a living thing. I heard a mouse snoring in the garden weeds. The rooftops of Berkeley looked like pitiful living meat sheltering grieving phantoms from the enternality of the heavens which they feared to face. By the time I went to bed I wasn't taken in by no Princess or no desire for no Princess and nobody's disapproval and I felt glad and slept well.”