John Kennedy Toole Quotes

31 Sourced Quotes

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 Then he remembered that his library card had been revoked.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
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
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
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
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
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
Apparently I lack some particular perversion which today's employer is seeking.

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

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

John Kennedy Toole
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
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
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
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
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
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
"Is it the part of the police department to harass me when this city is a flagrant vice capital of the civilized world?" Ignatius bellowed over the crowd in front of the store. "This city is famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians, all of whom are only too well protected by graft."

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

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

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

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

John Kennedy Toole