John Kennedy Toole Quotes

Abelman’s Dry GoodsKansas City, MissouriU.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 o...

Attacked by a bird, Mrs. Reilly wept. That hadda happen to you, Ignatius. Nobody never gets attacked by a bird.

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, co...

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

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

Do you think that I want to live in a communal society with people like that Battaglia acquaintance of yours, sweeping streets and breaking up rocks or whatever it is people are always doing in those...

He lunged at the glove, deflowering it, stabbing it, conquering it.

I am an anachronism. People realize this and resent it.

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.

Mrs. Reilly called in that accent that occurs south of New Jersey only in New Orleans, that Hoboken near the Gulf of Mexico.

Viens t’agenouiller avec moi près de la fenêtre, David, et prions pour que ta maman se sente bien demain, et que rien n’arrive à ton papa ce soir, et que toi et moi… que toi et moi ne souffrions pas t...

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 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 be...

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 ma...

I will probably spend years at the Eye, Ear, Nose, and Throat Hospital having this attended to, Ignatius said, fingering his ear. You may expect to receive some rather staggering medical bills each mo...

Magnolias don't look like that, Ignatius said, thrusting his cutlass at the offending pastel magnolia. You ladies need a course in botany. And perhaps geometry, too.You don't have to look at our work,...

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

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'...

Then read from the treasured volume The poem of thy choice. And lend to the rhyme of the poet The beauty of thy voice. And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares, that infest the day, Sha...

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