“The desert was always there, a patient white animal, waiting for men to die, for civilizations to flicker and pass into the darkness…All the evil of the world seemed not evil at all, but inevitable and good and part of that endless struggle to keep the desert down.”
Source: Ask the Dust (1939), Chapter Fourteen
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John Fante 113
1909–1983; American novelist, short story writer and screen… 1909–1983Related quotes

“Keep your hands open, and all the sands of the desert can pass through them.”
As quoted in Zen to Go (1989) by Jon Winokur, p. 126
Context: Keep your hands open, and all the sands of the desert can pass through them. Close them, and all you can feel is a bit of grit.

Source: Thoughts Selected from the Writings of Horace Mann (1872), p. 215

“what man calls civilization
always results in deserts”
archy and mehitabel (1927), what the ants are saying

“The good suffer, the evil flourish, and all that is mortal passes away.”

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 282

“Evil happens without effort, naturally, inevitably; good is always the product of skill.”
Le mal se fait sans effort, naturellement, par fatalité; le bien est toujours le produit d'un art.
XI: "Éloge du maquillage" http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/%C3%89loge_du_maquillage
Le peintre de la vie moderne (1863)

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), Q&A