Quotes from John Kennedy Toole

Mother doesn't cook, Ignatius said dogmatically, She burns.

Filth!' Ignatious shouted, spewing wet popcorn over rows. 'How dare she pretend to be a virgin. Look at her degenerate face. Rape her!

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.

In other words, you want to become totally bourgeois. You people have all been brainwashed. I imagine that you'd like to become a success or something equally vile.

Schiller needed the scent of apples rotting in his desk in order to write. I, too, have my needs.

I have taken to arriving at the office one hour later than I am expected. Therefore, I am far more rested and refreshed when I do arrive, and 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.

Had you 'artists' had a part in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel, it would have ended up looking like a particularly vulgar train terminal," Ignatius snorted.

I want that Easter Ham. Where's my Thanksgiving Turkey? Miss Trixie snarled

My mentality, uncontrollable and wanton as always, whispered to me a scheme so magnificent and daring that I shrank from the very thought of what I was hearing. Stop! I cried imploringly to my god-like mind. This is madness. But still I listened to the counsel of my brain. It was offering me the opportunity to Save the World Through Degeneracy.

Clean, hard-working, dependable, quiet type.' Good God! What kind of monster is this that they want. I am afraid that I could never work for a concern with a worldview like that.

I would very much like to know what the Founding Fathers would say if they could see these children being debauched to further the cause of Clearasil. However, I always suspected that democracy would come to this.

I was appalled that so meaningless a person would dare such effrontery.

Every difficult work presents us with a choice of whether to judge the author inept for not being clear, or ourselves stupid for not grasping what is going on. Montaigne encouraged us to blame the author. An incomprehensible prose-style is likely to have resulted more from laziness than cleverness; what reads easily is rarely so written...

On the prow of the wagon, in an attempt to attract business among the Quarterites, Ignatius taped a sheet of Big Chief paper on which he had printed in crayon: TWELVE INCHES (12) OF PARADISE. So far no one had responded to its message.

Over the years I have become very good at getting out of things I don't want to do.

Oh, my God! Ignatius bellowed from the front of the house. What an egregious insult to good taste.

This is a floral abortion,' Ignatius commented irritably and tapped the vase with his cutlas. 'Dyed flowers are unnatural and perverse and, I suspect, obscene also. I can see that I am going to have my hands full with you people.

Apparently I am pushing a jinx about the streets. I am certain that I can do better with some other wagon. A new cart, a new start.

This...is a new crutch to help you make excuses for your meaningless, impotent existence.

All signs were pointing upward; his wheel was revolving skyward.

I don't drive. Will you kindly go away? I am waiting for my mother.

Whoa! If I'm gonna be a doorman, I gonna be the mos sabotagin doorman ever guarded a plantation. Ooo-wee. The cotton fiel be burn to the groun before I'm through. Watch out, Jones. Don be getting yourself in no trouble. Whoa!

I would very much like to know what the Founding Fathers would say if they could see these children being debauched to further the cause of Clearasil. However, I always suspected that democracy would come to this . . . "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.

but who are we to question the motives of these giants of commerce whose whims rule the course of our nation.