Famous Quotes & Sayings

John Kennedy Toole Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by John Kennedy Toole.

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Famous Quotes By John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1409570

I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1762681

Mother, when was this coffee dripped?" Ignatius demanded, flapping into the kitchen again.
"Just about a hour ago. Why?"
"It certainly tastes brackish. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 217922

Is it the part of the police department to harass me when this city is a flagrant vice capital of the civilized world?" Ignatius bellowed over the crowd in front of the store. "This city is famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians, all of whom are only too well protected by graft. If you have a moment, I shall endeavor to discuss the crime problems with you, but don't make the mistake of bothering me. — John Kennedy Toole

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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. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1893275

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

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 2001472

Remember I'm from Dauphine Street. We useta put the kitchen chairs out on the banquette and set there till midnight sometimes waiting for the house to cool off. And the things the people down here say! Lord. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1935550

Do I believe the total perversion that I am witnessing? — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 89161

So we see that even when Fortuna spins us downward, the wheel sometimes halts for a moment and we find ourselves in a good, small cycle within a larger bad cycle. The universe, of course, is based upon the principle of the circle within the circle. At the moment, I am in an inner circle. Of course, smaller circles within this circle are also possible. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 730974

In my private apocalypse he will be impaled upon his own nightstick. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1021615

After all, I do not believe that one must necessarily scrape bottom, as it were, in order to view his society subjectively. Rather than moving vertically downward, one may move horizontally outward toward a point of sufficient detachment where a modicum of creature comforts are not necessarily precluded. — John Kennedy Toole

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I refuse to "look up." Optimism nauseates me. It is perverse. Since man's fall, his proper position in the universe has been one of misery. — John Kennedy Toole

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The only excursion of my life outside of New Orleans took me through the vortex to the whirlpool of despair: Baton Rouge ... New Orleans is, on the other hand, a comfortable metropolis which has a certain apathy and stagnation which I find inoffensive. — John Kennedy Toole

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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. — John Kennedy Toole

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Oh, New Orleans is such freedom. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 548568

You could tell by the way he talked, though, that he had gone to school a long time. That was probably what was wrong with him. — John Kennedy Toole

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

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 374989

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 ... — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1768733

Here at any rate is Ignatius Reilly, without progenitor in any literature I know of - slob extraordinary, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one - who is in violent revolt against the entire modern age, lying in his flannel nightshirt, in a back bedroom on Constantinople Street in New Orleans, who between gigantic seizures of flatulence and eructations is filling dozens of Big Chief tablets with invective. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 450416

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

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 773481

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. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 472604

Your total ignorance of that which you profess to teach merits the death penalty. I doubt whether you would know that St. Cassian of Imola was stabbed to death by his students with their styli. His death, a martyr's honorable one, made him a patron saint of teachers. Pray to him, you deluded fool, you "anyone for tennis?" golf-playing, cocktail-quaffing pseudo-pedant, for you do indeed need a heavenly patron. Although your days are numbered, you will not die as a martyr - for you further no holy cause - but as the total ass which you really are. ZORRO A sword was drawn on the last line of the page. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 2137024

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

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 678328

Ignatius, all at once you're your horrible old self. All at once I think I'm making a very big mistake. — John Kennedy Toole

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

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It's not your fate to be well treated," Ignatius cried. "You're an overt masochist. Nice treatment will confuse and destroy you. — John Kennedy Toole

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Like a bitch in heat, I seem to attract a coterie of policemen and sanitation officials. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 586479

You can always tell employees of the government by the total vacancy which occupies the space where most other people have faces. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1158721

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." "Ignatius makes delicious cheese dips," Mrs. Reilly said. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1981290

Although the style of each varied in crudity, the subjects of the paintings were relatively similar: camellias floating in bowls of water, azaleas tortured into ambitious flower arrangements, magnolias that looked like white windmills. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 634450

...
"Ignatius, was you wearing that cap when you spoke to the insurance man?"
"Of course I was. That office was improperly heated. I don't know how the employees of that company manage to stay alive exposing themselves to that chill day after day. And then there are those fluorescent tubes baking their brains out and blinding them. I did not like the office at all. I tried to explain the inadequacies of the place to the personnel manager, but he seemed rather uninterested. He was ultimately very hostile." Ignatius let out a monstrous belch. "However, I told you that it would be like this. I am an anachronism. People realize this and resent it."
"Lord, babe, you gotta look up."
"Look up?" Ignatius repeated savagely. "Who has been sowing that unnatural garbage into your mind?"
... — John Kennedy Toole

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Employers sense in me a denial of their values ... they fear me. i suspect that they can see that i am forced to function in a century which i loathe. — John Kennedy Toole

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She appears to have been knocked a bit in her life already. Up rather than down. If she ever nears me, however, the direction will be reversed. — John Kennedy Toole

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a block that had moved into the twentieth century carelessly and uncaringly - and with very limited funds. — John Kennedy Toole

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

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Fortuna, that vicious slut. — John Kennedy Toole

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Talc: You have been found guilty of misleading and perverting the young. I decree that you be
hung by your underdeveloped testicles until dead. ZORRO — John Kennedy Toole

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What is it, Gus? A problem? Are you having a problem? That's one of your problems. You never tell me your problems. — John Kennedy Toole

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Suddenly Mrs. Reilly remembered the horrible night that she and Mr. Reilly had gone to Prytania to see Clark Gable and Jean Harlow in 'Red Dust.' In the heat and confusion that had followed their return home, nice Mr. Reilly had tried one of his indirect approaches, and Ignatius was conceived. Poor Mr. Reilly. He had never gone to another movie as long as he lived. — John Kennedy Toole

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Is my paranoia getting completely out of hand, or are you mongoloids really talking about me? — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1622961

... perverts around the world will also band together to capture the military in their respective countries. In those reactionary countries in which the deviates seem to be having some trouble in gaining control, we will send aid to them as rebels to help them in toppling their governments. When we have at last overthrown all existing governments, the world will enjoy not war but global orgies conducted with the utmost protocol and the most truly international spirit, for these people do transcend simple national differences. — John Kennedy Toole

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All signs were pointing upward; his wheel was revolving skyward. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 2043824

They would try to make me into a moron who liked television and new cars and frozen food. Don't you understand? Psychiatry is worse than communism. I refuse to be brainwashed. I won't be a robot! — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 2197746

Hey! All you peoples draggin along here. Stop and come stick your ass on a Night of Joy stool," he started again. "Night of Joy got genuine color peoples workin below the minimal wage. Whoa! Guarantee plantation atmosphere, got cotton growin right on the stage right in front your eyeball, got a civil right worker gettin his ass beat up between show. Hey! — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 2021927

...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 those who do know reality when they see it. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1742717

In the five years that he had dedicated to this work, he had produced an average of only six paragraphs monthly. He could not even remember what he had written in some of the tablets, and he realized that several were filled principally with doodling. However, Ignatius thought calmly, Rome was not built in a day. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 2176990

This liberal doxy must be impaled on the member of a particularly large stallion! — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 2162079

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

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 2019622

Mr. Gonzalez watched Mr. Zalatimo probing his long index finger high into one of his nostrils. What would this one do? His feet tingled with fear. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1896844

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. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1999050

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. — John Kennedy Toole

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Once a person was asked to step into this brutal century, anything could happen — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1819443

I really don't have the time to discuss the errors of your value judgements. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1830358

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. — John Kennedy Toole

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The heart is important at any age, I'm afraid. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1993281

You must realize the fear and hatred which my weltanschauung instills in people. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 2203455

Why did you step out of my life, you minx? Your new hair-do is fascinating and cosmopolitan." He snatched at her pigtail and pressed it to his wet moustache, kissing it vigorously. "The scent of soot and carbon in your hair excites me with suggestions of glamorous Gotham. We must leave immediately. I must go flower in Manhattan. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1858540

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. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1882423

I thought that the vibrissae about my nostrils detected something unique while I was outside. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 2135434

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 — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1937498

Already the lecture is beginning to interest several dedicated people I know. One person who has promised to come (and bring several sharp friends, too) is a brilliant new contact I made during rush hour on the Jerome Avenue line. His name is Ongah, and he is an exchange student from Kenya who is writing a dissertation at N.Y.U. on the French symbolists of the 19th cent. Of course, you would not understand or like a brilliant and dedicated guy like Ongah. I could listen to him talk for hours. He is serious and does not come on with all of that pseudo stuff like you always did. What Ongah says is meaningful. Ongah is real and vital. He is virile and aggressive. He rips at reality and tears aside concealing veils.

"Oh, my God!" Ignatius slobbered. "The minx has been raped by a Mau-Mau. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 2133351

No wonder you've turned on me so savagely. I suspect that you are using me as a scapegoat for your own feelings of guilt. — John Kennedy Toole

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With the breakdown of the medieval system, the gods of chaos, lunacy, and bad taste gained ascendancy. — John Kennedy Toole

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

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

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This is clearly a case for the Civil Liberties Union," Ignatius observed, squeezing his mother's drooping shoulder with the paw. "We must contact Myrna Minkoff, my lost love. She knows about those things. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 698659

The human desire for food and sex is relatively equal. If there are armed rapes, why should there not be armed hot dog thefts? — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 687776

It smells terrible in here.'
Well, what do you expect? The human body, when confined, produces certain odors which we tend to forget in this age of deodorants and other perversions. Actually, I find the atmosphere of this room rather comforting. Schiller needed the scent of apples rotting in his desk in order to write. I, too, have my needs. You may remember that Mark Twain preferred to lie supinely in bed while composing those rather dated and boring efforts which contemporary scholars try to prove meaningful. Veneration of Mark Twain is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 683916

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

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

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

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 483648

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. — John Kennedy Toole

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To you character is a psychosis. Integrity is a complex. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 388282

I doubt whether any hack, under pressure, could pen such atrocious melodrama, — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 368834

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, constructing a bomb, and mailing it in plain paper to Myrna. Then he remembered that his library card had been revoked. — John Kennedy Toole

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

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 315769

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

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Mothers got a hard road to travel, believe me. — John Kennedy Toole

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I should have known that every time I open the door of my room I am literally opening a Pandora's Box. — John Kennedy Toole

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Oh, Fortuna, blind, heedless goddess, I am strapped to your wheel,' Ignatius belched, 'Do not crush me beneath your spokes. Raise me on high, divinity. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 136754

Oh, shut up your little pussymouth, you mongoloid. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 106072

This guy was a real Pscyho' Mr. Levy said.
'To you character is a psychosis, integrity is a complex. I've heard it all before. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1143604

It will all end very badly, Gus — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1548409

Do you think that I have a problem?" Ignatius bellowed. "The only problem that those people have anyway is that they don't like new cars and hairsprays. That 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."
"Ignatius, that ain't true. You remember old Mr. Becnel used to live down the block? They locked him up because he was running down the street naked."
"Of course he was running down the street naked. His skin could not bear any more of that Dacron and nylon clothing that was clogging his pores. I've always considered Mr Becnel one of the martyrs of our age. The poor man was badly victimized. Now run along to the front door and see if my taxi has arrived." p.306 — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1538540

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. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1472951

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

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1401046

I am an anachronism. People realize this and resent it. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1395568

Stop!' I cried imploringly to my god-like mind. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1388292

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. — John Kennedy Toole

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Perhaps the experience can give my writing a new dimension. Being actively engaged in the system which I criticize will be an interesting irony in itself. — John Kennedy Toole

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Just look at my sweater, you disgusting monster."
"Only the most flamboyant offal would be seen in a miscarriage like that. You must have some shame or at least some taste in dress. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1152007

When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occassional cheese dip. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1579158

Perhaps I should have been a Negro. I suspect I would have been a rather large and terrifying one, continually pressing my ample thigh against the withered thighs of old white ladies in public conveyances a great deal and eliciting more than one shriek of panic. Then, too, if I were a Negro, I would not be pressured by my mother to find a good job, for no good jobs would be available. My mother herself, a worn old Negress, would be too broken by years of underpaid labor as a domestic to go out bowling at night. She and I could live most pleasantly in some moldy shack in the slums in a state of ambitionless peace, realizing contentedly that we were unwanted, that striving was meaningless. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1135046

She ran into the bathroom and powdered her face and the front of her dress, drew a surrealistic version of a mouth beneath her nose, and dashed into her bedroom to find a coat. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1083036

Myrna was not astigmatic; the lenses were clear glass; she wore the glasses to prove her dedication and intensity of purpose. — John Kennedy Toole

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Like two figures in the medieval Morality play, Pragmatism and Morality spar in the boxing ring of my brain. — John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole Quotes 1038122

Possession of anything new or expensive only reflected a person's lack of theology and geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul. — John Kennedy Toole

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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

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Look at that. She think I got siphlus and TB and a hard-on and I gonna cut her up with a razor and lif her purse. Ooo-wee. — John Kennedy Toole

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I was appalled that so meaningless a person would dare such effrontery. — John Kennedy Toole

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Go dangle your withered parts over the toilet!' Ignatius screamed savagely. — John Kennedy Toole