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John Kennedy Toole QUOTES

John Kennedy Toole QUOTES

181 " It was a neighborhood that had degenerated from Victorian to nothing in particular, a block that had moved into the twentieth century carelessly and uncaringly—and with very limited funds. "

― John Kennedy Toole , A Confederacy of Dunces

182 " Her logic was a combination of half-truths and clichés, her worldview a compound of misconceptions deriving from a history of our nation as written from the perspective of a subway tunnel. "

― John Kennedy Toole , A Confederacy of Dunces

183 " Claude puede ser amable y bueno, y eso no puedes serlo tú, con toda tu política y tus aires de sabio. Con todo lo que he hecho siempre por ti, lo único que tú haces es tratarme a patadas. Quiero que alguien me trate bien antes de morir. Lo aprendiste todo, Ignatius, todo, salvo cómo debe comportarse un ser humano. "

― John Kennedy Toole , A Confederacy of Dunces

184 " 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! "

― John Kennedy Toole

185 " 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

186 " Oh my God! You're wearing your bowling shoes! Only you would wear bowling shoes to your child's sickbed. "

― John Kennedy Toole , A Confederacy of Dunces

187 " 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. "

― John Kennedy Toole

188 " 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

189 " Get out of that womb-house for at least an hour a day. Take a walk, Ignatius. Look at the trees and birds. Realize that life is surging all around you. The valve closes because it thinks it is living in a dead organism. Open your heart and you will open your valve. "

― John Kennedy Toole , A Confederacy of Dunces

190 " My corps of attorneys will contact you in the morning wherever it is that you carry on your questionable activities. I shall warn them beforehand that they may expect to see and hear anything. They are all brilliant attorneys, pillars of the community, aristocratic Creole scholars whose knowledge of the more surreptitious forms of living is quite limited. They may even refuse to see you. A considerably lesser representative may be sent to call upon you, some junior partner whom they've taken in out of pity. "

― John Kennedy Toole

191 " The children on that [American Bandstand] program should all be gassed. "

― John Kennedy Toole , A Confederacy of Dunces

192 " I suspect that beneath your offensively and vulgarly effeminate façade there may be a soul of sorts. Have you read widely in Boethius?"
"Who? Oh, heavens no. I never even read newspapers."
"Then you must begin a reading program immediately so that you may understand the crises of our age," Ignatius said solemnly. "Begin with the late Romans, including Boethius, of course. Then you should dip rather extensively into early Medieval. You may skip the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. That is mostly dangerous propaganda. Now that I think of it, you had better skip the Romantics and the Victorians, too. For the contemporary period, you should study some selected comic books."
"You're fantastic."
"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 , A Confederacy of Dunces

193 " Ignatius, what's all this trash on the floor?"
"That is my worldview that you see. It still must be incorporated into a whole, so be careful where you step. "

― John Kennedy Toole

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

― John Kennedy Toole , A Confederacy of Dunces

195 " 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

196 " ...
    'How old is he?' the policeman asked Mrs. Reilly.
    'I am thirty,' Ignatius said condescendingly.
    '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 , A Confederacy of Dunces

197 " Abelman’s Dry Goods
Kansas City, Missouri
U.S.A. Mr. I. Abelman, Mongoloid, Esq.:
We have received via post your absurd comments about our trousers, the comments revealing, as they did, your total lack of contact with reality. Were you more aware, you would know or realize by now that the offending trousers were dispatched to you with our full knowledge that they were inadequate so far as length was concerned.
“Why? Why?” You are, in your incomprehensible babble, unable to assimilate stimulating concepts of commerce into your retarded and blighted worldview.
The trousers were sent to you (1) as a means of testing your initiative (A clever, wide-awake business concern should be able to make three-quarter-length trousers a byword of masculine fashion. Your advertising and merchandising programs are obviously faulty.) and (2) as a means of testing your ability to meet the standards requisite in a distributor of our quality product. (Our loyal and dependable outlets can vend any trouser bearing the Levy label no matter how abominable their design and construction. You are apparently a faithless people.)
We do not wish to be bothered in the future by such tedious complaints. Please confine your correspondence to orders only. We are a busy and dynamic organization whose mission needless effrontery and harassment can only hinder. If you molest us again, sir, you may feel the sting of the lash across your pitiful shoulders.
Yours in anger,
Gus Levy, Pres. "

― John Kennedy Toole , A Confederacy of Dunces

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

― John Kennedy Toole

199 " Martyrdom is meaningless in our age. "

― John Kennedy Toole

200 " When Fortuna spins you downward, go out to a movie and get more out of life. Ignatius was about to say this to himself; then he remembered that he went to the movies almost every night, no matter which way Fortuna was spinning. "

― John Kennedy Toole