“She walked over to my desk and pulled a page out of the typewriter. I didn't know what was happening. I still said nothing, but I could smell liquor on her breath, and then the very peculiar but distinctive odor of decay, sweetish and cloying, the odor of oldness, the odor of this woman in the process of growing old.”

—  John Fante , book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

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John Fante 113
1909–1983; American novelist, short story writer and screen… 1909–1983

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