John Kennedy Toole Quotes - Page 2

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

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

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.

This liberal doxy must be impaled upon the member of a particularly large stallion.

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

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

Oh, Fortuna, you capricious sprite!

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.

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.

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.

Mother went out again tonight, looking like a courtesan.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

... 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

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.

It will all end very badly, Gus

Mothers got a hard road to travel, believe me.

Oh, New Orleans is such freedom.