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1 " This river is famed in atrocious song and verse; the most prevalent motif is one which attempts to make of the river an ersatz father figure. Actually, the Mississippi River is a treacherous and sinister body of water whose eddies and currents yearly claim many lives. I have never known anyone who would even venture to stick his toe in its polluted waters, which seethe with sewage, industrial waste, and deadly insecticides. Even the fish are dying. Therefore, the Mississippi as Father-God-Moses-Daddy-Phallus-Pops is an altogether false motif began, I would imagine, by that dreary fraud, Mark Twain. This failure to make contact with reality is, however, characteristic of almost all of America’s “art.” Any connection between American art and American nature is purely coincidental, but this is only because the nation as a whole has no contact with reality. That is only one of the reasons why I have always been forced to exist on the fringes of its society, consigned to the Limbo reserved for this who do know reality when they see it. "
― John Kennedy Toole , A Confederacy of Dunces
2 " Poor Father, I see his final exploration. He arrives at the new place, his hair risen in astonishment, his mouth and eyes dumb. His toe scuffs a soft storm of sand, he kneels and his arms spread in pantomimic celebration, the immigrant, as in every moment of his life, arriving eternally on the shore of his Self. "
― E.L. Doctorow , Ragtime
3 " Ron's ears turned bright red and he become engrossed in a tuft of grass at his feet, which he prodded with his toe 'he must've known I'd run out on you'.'No', Harry corrected him, 'He must've known you'd always want to come back "
― J.K. Rowling , Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7)
4 " Someone asked me... how I felt and I was reminded of a story that a fellow townsman of ours used to tell - Abraham Lincoln. They asked him how he felt once after an unsuccessful election. He said he felt like a little boy who has stubbed his toe in the dark. He said that he was too old to cry but it hurt too much to laugh. "
