John Kennedy Toole famous quotes

You could tell by the way he talked, though, that he had gone to school a long time. That was probably what was wrong with him.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#School #Long #Gone

you can always tell employees of the government by the total vacancy which occupies the space where most other people have faces.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Government #Space #People

Mother went out again tonight, looking like a courtesan.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Mother #Tonight #Courtesans

...I doubt very seriously whether anyone will hire me.' What do you mean, babe? You a fine boy with a good education.' Employers sense in me a denial of their values.' He rolled over onto his back. 'They fear me. I suspect that they can see that I am forced to function in a century I loathe. This was true even when I worked for the New Orleans Public Library.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Work #Mean #Boys

My life is a rather grim one. One day I shall perhaps describe it to you in great detail.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#One Day #Details #Life Is

Apparently I lack some particular perversion which today's employer is seeking.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Work #Today #Employers

I avoid that bleak first hour of the working day during which my still sluggish senses and body make every chore a penance. I find that in arriving later, the work which I do perform is of a much higher quality.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Morning #Quality #Penance

I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Food #Writing #Cheesy

Is my paranoia getting completely out of hand, or are you mongoloids really talking about me?
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Attitude #Hands #Talking

I refuse to "look up." Optimism nauseates me. It is perverse. Since man's fall, his proper position in the universe has been one of misery.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Fall #Men #Optimism

I recommend Batman especially, for he tends to transcend the abysmal society in which he's found himself. His morality is rather rigid, also. I rather respect Batman.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Morality #Found

Oh, New Orleans is such freedom.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#New Orleans

Mothers got a hard road to travel, believe me.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Mother #Believe #Believe In Me

Jail was preferable. There they only limited you physically. In a mental ward they tampered with your soul and worldview and mind.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Jail #Soul #Mind

Having once been so high, humanity fell so low. What had once been dedicated to the soul was now dedicated to the sale.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Soul #Humanity #Lows

...When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occassional cheese dip.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Brain #Cheese #Dip

Leaving New Orleans also frightened me considerably. Outside of the city limits the heart of darkness, the true wasteland begins.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Heart #New Orleans #Cities

This liberal doxy must be impaled on the member of a particularly large stallion!
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Doxies #Stallions #Members

I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Peers

It's not your fate to be well treated," Ignatius cried. "You're an overt masochist. Nice treatment will confuse and destroy you.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Nice #Fate #Treatment

The only excursion of my life outside of New Orleans took me through the vortex to the whirlpool of despair: Baton Rouge. . . . New Orleans is, on the other hand, a comfortable metropolis which has a certain apathy and stagnation which I find inoffensive.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#New Orleans #Hands #Despair

Oh, Fortuna, blind, heedless goddess, I am strapped to your wheel,' Ignatius belched, 'Do not crush me beneath your spokes. Raise me on high, divinity.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Crush #Divinity #Wheels

The heart is important at any age, I'm afraid.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Heart #Important #Age

I bet you cook good, huh?" Darlene asked. "Mother doesn't cook," Ignatius said dogmatically. "She burns.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Mother #Said #Cooks

Oh, Fortuna, you capricious sprite!
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Capricious #Fortuna

The only problem that those people have anyway is that they don't like new cars and hair sprays. That's why they are put away. They make the other members of the society fearful. Every asylum in this nation is filled with poor souls who simply cannot stand lanolin, cellophane, plastic, television, and subdivisions.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Hair #People #Car

I was getting tired about what the preacher called Christian. Anything he did was Christian, and the people in his church believed it, too. If he stole some book he didn't like from the library, or made the radio station play only part of the day on Sunday, or took somebody off to the state poor home, he called it Christian. I never had much religious training, and I never went to Sunday school because we didn't belong to the church when I was old enough to go, but I thought I knew what believing in Christ meant, and it wasn't half the things the preacher did.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Christian #Religious #Book

The human desire for food and sex is relatively equal. If there are armed rapes, why should there not be armed hot dog thefts?
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Dog #Sex #Desire

I should perhaps warn you that I am about to faint from anxiety and general depression, though. The film I saw last night was especially grueling, a teen-age beach musical. I almost collapsed during the singing sequence on surfboard.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Beach #Night #Anxiety

Veneration of Mark Twain is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Roots #Intellectual #Currents

Stop!' I cried imploringly to my god-like mind.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Mind #Tears #Cry

You got a job?" "Ignatius hasta help me at home," Mrs. Reilly said. Her initial courage was failing a little, and she began to twist the lute string with the cord on the cake boxes. "I got terrible arthuritis." "I dust a bit," Ignatius told the policeman. "In addition, I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Jobs #Home #Writing

A firm rule must be imposed upon our nation before it destroys itself. The United States needs some theology and geometry, some taste and decency. I suspect that we are teetering on the edge of the abyss.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Taste #United States #Needs

Canned food is a perversion,' Ignatius said. 'I suspect that it is ultimately very damaging to the soul.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Soul #Said #Canned Food

When Fortuna spins you downward, go out to a movie and get more out of life.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Fortuna

Had that poor Reilly kook really been proud of Levy Pants? He had always said that he was. That was one good sign of his insanity.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Insanity #Proud #Pants

It will all end very badly, Gus
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Gus #Ends

It smells terrible in here.' Well, what do you expect? The human body, when confined, produces certain odors which we tend to forget in this age of deodorants and other perversions. Actually, I find the atmosphere of this room rather comforting. Schiller needed the scent of apples rotting in his desk in order to write. I, too, have my needs. You may remember that Mark Twain preferred to lie supinely in bed while composing those rather dated and boring efforts which contemporary scholars try to prove meaningful. Veneration of Mark Twain is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Meaningful #Lying #Writing

Once a person was asked to step into this brutal century, anything could happen
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Steps #Century #Brutal

Social Note: I have sought escape in the Prytania on more than one occasion, pulled by the attractions of some technicolored horrors, filmed abortions that were offenses against any criteria of taste and decency, reels and reels of perversion and blasphemy that stunned my disbelieving eyes, the shocked my virginal mind, and sealed my valve.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Eye #Abortion #Mind

employers sense in me a denial of their values...they fear me. i suspect that they can see that i am forced to function in a century which i loathe.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Denial #Century #Function

with the breakdown of the medieval system, the gods of chaos, lunacy, and bad taste gained ascendancy.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Taste #Chaos #Medieval

... I tried to end our little duel. I called out pacifying words; I entreated; I finally surrendered. Still Clyde came, my pirate costume so great a success that it had apparently convinced him that we were back in the golden days of romantic old New Orleans when gentlemen decided matters of hot dog honor at twenty paces
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Dog #New Orleans #Pirate

I suspect that I am the result of particularly weak conception on the part of my father. His sperm was probably emitted in a rather offhand manner.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Father #Weak #Results

Between notes, he had contemplated means of destroying Myrna Minkoff but had reached no satisfactory conclusion. His most promising scheme had involved getting a book on munitions from the library, constructing a bomb, and mailing it in plain paper to Myrna. Then he remembered that his library card had been revoked.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Book #Mean #Library

Psycho? The woman's senile. We had to stop at about thirty gas stations on the way over here. Finally I got tired of getting out of the car and showing her which was the Men's and which was the Women's, so I let her pick them herself. I worked out a system. The law of averages. I laid money on her and she came out about fifty-fifty.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Tired #Men #Average

So we see that even when Fortuna spins us downward, the wheel sometimes halts for a moment and we find ourselves in a good, small cycle within a larger bad cycle. The universe, of course, is based upon the principle of the circle within the circle. At the moment, I am in an inner circle. Of course, smaller circles within this circle are also possible.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Circles #Wheels #Principles

My mother is currently associating with some undesirables who are attempting to transform her into an athlete of sorts, deprave specimens of mankind who regularly bowl their way to oblivion.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Mother #Athlete #Way

The day before me is fraught with God knows what horrors.
-- John Kennedy Toole

#Fear #Horror #God Knows