Toole Quotes & Sayings

I loved doing My Favorite Year, which was great fun, and The Ruling Class, which I made with all my chums. — Peter O'Toole

And the reason parenting is becoming increasingly crucial is that we now live in a world that is more fucked up than Peter O'Toole on his birthday. — Dennis Miller

I don't go for this auto-cannibalism. Very damaging. — Peter O'Toole

My dad went at 86. A car killed him. He was crossing the road. — Peter O'Toole

I suggest that an education and reading and facts aren't bad things on which to ponder a few notions. — Peter O'Toole

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

Honeybees are social insects and live in colonies. Each colony is a family unit, comprising a single, egg-laying female or queen and her many sterile daughters called workers. The workers cooperate in the food-gathering, nest-building and rearing the offspring. Males are reared only at the times of the year when their presence is required. — Christopher O'Toole

I know nothing at all about women. They are an amazing, beautiful mystery. — Peter O'Toole

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

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

No one can take Jesus away from me. There's no doubt there was a historical figure of tremendous importance, with enormous notions. Such as peace. — Peter O'Toole

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

I wouldn't mind being a lord. — Peter O'Toole

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

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

Acting has been described as farting about in disguise. — Peter O'Toole

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

Greatness, Master, is generally only considered enough if you are the greatest. — Jessica O'Toole

It's my job, it's what I do, it's what I'm on earth to do and it's who I am. — Peter O'Toole

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

Public crucifixion is no fun. — Peter O'Toole

Stengel admitted. "I'm not going to make any decision until I have to give the umpire my batting order. Then you'll know as well as I." The next afternoon, Casey resisted — Andrew O'Toole

A rubber neck is a necessary part of equipment. — Peter O'Toole

Booze is the most outrageous of drugs which is why I chose it. — Peter O'Toole

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

But I knew the way the people in the town thought about things. They always had some time left over from their life to bother about other people and what they did. They thought they had to get together to help other people out, like the time they got together about the woman who let a colored man borrow her car and told her the best place for her was up north with all the other nigger lovers, and the time they got the veterans with overseas wives out. If you were different from anybody in town, you had to get out. That's why everybody was so much alike. The way they talked, what they did, what they liked, what they hated. If somebody got to hate something and he was the right person, everybody had to hate it too, or people began to hate the ones who didn't hate it. They used to tell us in school to think for yourself, but you couldn't do that in the town. You had to think what your father thought all his life, and that was what everybody thought. — John Kennedy Toole

He has the vocal modulation of a railway-station announcer, the expressive power of a fence-post and the charisma of a week-old head of lettuce. — Fintan O'Toole

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

Watch yourself, bitch. You're nothing but a thief and gob shite scumbag with a face like an arse and a mind to go with it, — D.H. Toole

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

...
"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

I believe that a contract, or at least an understanding, exists between the American public and the American advertiser concerning what advertising is, what its limitations are and what price people will pay for it. — John O'Toole

Out of crisis comes clarity — Randolph O'Toole

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

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

It was a lie, of course, and she was prepared to confess it to her priest. But she'd be damned if she'd tell him she'd been playing with his music.
Her pride was worth the penance.
He felt a quiver in his heart that he took for sympathy. "There, Brenna darling. Have you gone and fallen in love on me?"
She jerked, whirled, gaped at him. He was watching her with such - such bloody affection, such patience and sympathy. She could have beaten him black and blue. Instead, she just shoved clear of him and snatched up her toolbox. "Shawn Gallagher, you are truly a great idiot of a man."
With her nose in the air and her tools clanking, she stalked out.
He only shook his head, then went back to his cleaning up. With that little quiver around his heart again, he wondered who it was that O'Toole had set her sights on.
Whoever, Shawn thought, slamming a cupboard door just a little too forcefully, the man had better be worthy of her. — Nora Roberts

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

You know when you've found a part that you want to play. You know it because the part takes you over. It sits in the script waiting for you to play him. — Peter O'Toole

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

I'm not working-class: I come from the criminal classes. — Peter O'Toole

it is important to stress that history is always constructed, not absolute or unchallangeable. Histories are stories about the past, and reconstructing the past ill involve elements of mythologising from the cultural, political and theoretical stances of both the historian and the informants. — John O'Toole

I have no intention of uttering my last words on the stage. Room service and a couple of depraved young women will do me quite nicely for an exit. — Peter O'Toole

When I work with young people, I grab energy from them by the handsful. — Peter O'Toole

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

Let it be understood that we cannot go outside of this alternative: liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest; not liberty, equality, survival of the unfittest. The former carries society forward and favors all its best members; the latter carries society downwards and favors its worst members. — James O'Toole

Salinger, Plath, Toole, the literature of choice for the brooding outcast. — Rob Thomas

I'm a professional and I'll do anything - a poetry reading, television, cinema, anything that allows me to act. — Peter O'Toole

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

It distresses us to return work which is not perfect. — Peter O'Toole

I'm the most gregarious of men and love good company, but never less alone when alone. — Peter O'Toole

I once knew a fellow who committed robbery with violence, and he was sentenced to a long prison stretch and 12 strokes of the cat. He'd been injured during the robbery, so they put him in hospital to make him better so that they could make him worse. During the administration of the cat, he fainted after six strokes, and the doctor put him in hospital again. And he got very friendly with the nurses and the doctors, and after a while they got him well enough to go back and take the next six strokes. I saw him afterward and I said: "Oh, Jesus - that bloody law, that bloody judge!" But he said: "I don't want the fellow who made the law, and I don't want the fellow who passed the sentence. All I want is the fellow who held the bloody whip. — Peter O'Toole

Irish women are always carrying water on their heads, and always carrying their husbands home from pubs. Such things are the greatest posture-builders in the world. — Peter O'Toole

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

Every three or four years, I'm hot again. — Peter O'Toole

For me, life has either been a wake or a wedding. — Peter O'Toole

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

That had been her plan, he decided. The devious witch. She'd planted the seed in his brain, stirred up his loins, as he was only a man, after all, and now she could torment him just by being in the same vicinity.
Well, two could play this game.
Rather than waiting for Darcy to pick up the orders, he carried them out himself. Just to show Brenna O'Toole that she didn't trouble him in the least.
The perverse creature didn't even glance his way as he swung into the pub and wound his way through the crowd to the tables. — Nora Roberts

My son has a T-shirt that says, "Discipline doesn't cure Asperger's. But thanks for your concern. — Jennifer Cook O'Toole

Writing is a kind of performing art, and I can't sit down to write unless I'm dressed. I don't mean dressed in a suit, but dressed well and comfortably and I have to be shaved and bathed. — Peter O'Toole

I can't stand light. I hate weather. — Peter O'Toole

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

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

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

Will you please stop screeching like a fishmonger and run along? Don't you have a bottle of muscatel baking in the oven? — John Kennedy Toole

Acting is just being a man. Being human. Not forcing it. — Peter O'Toole

Health note: My stomach is getting out of bounds; the seams of my vendor's smock are creaking ominously. — John Kennedy Toole

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

When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself. — Peter O'Toole

I found him perhaps the least terrifying man I've ever met in the theater - because at first glance I could see through him and he could see through me, and he knew that I knew that he knew. Look, love, I've been bullied all my life by bigger experts than Larry Olivier, I can assure you, and he's just got to get in line. — Peter O'Toole

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. — John Kennedy Toole

When executing advertising, it's best to think of yourself as an uninvited guest in the living room of a prospect who has the magical power to make you disappear instantly. — John O'Toole

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

Even within our culture, there are times when breasts stop being read as bouncy sex balls: when women are breastfeeding, there's pretty wide acceptance of the fact that shouting 'phwoar' is bad form. — Emer O'Toole

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

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

And I had known Peter O'Toole before in London. And I'd liked him very much. And the thought of being in a picture with him was very challenging to me. And he was playing the starring role. — Anthony Quinn

She went up to his bedroom door and listened to the wildly twanging bed springs as they reached a crescendo as they built toward a finale worthy of Grieg's 'In the Hall of the Mountain King — John Kennedy Toole

What I like is bottomless flattery. — Peter O'Toole

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

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

I can make the best French toast. — Peter O'Toole

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

I never met Peter O'Toole, but he one was of those rare actors whose success was defined by a single role. His incandescent performance in David Lean's 'Lawrence of Arabia' is one that nobody who saw it will ever forget. — Michael Korda

Too long have I confined myself in Miltonic isolation and meditation. It is clearly time for me to step boldly into our society, not in the boring, passive manner of the Myrna Minkoff school of social action, but with great style and zest. — John Kennedy Toole

My father was a racetrack bookie. — Peter O'Toole

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

Many years ago I sent an old, beloved jacket to a cleaner, the Sycamore Cleaners. It was a leather jacket covered in Guinness and blood and marmalade, one of those jobs ... and it came back with a little note pinned to it, and on the note it said, 'It distresses us to return work which is not perfect.' So that will do for me. That can go on my tombstone. — Peter O'Toole

I will not be an ordinary man, because I have a right to be extraordinary. — Peter O'Toole

There's always a hunger, when you're young, to go from peak to peak and avoid the valleys. — Peter O'Toole

I've never looked for women. When I was a teenager, perhaps. — Peter O'Toole

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

I take whatever good part comes along. — Peter O'Toole

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

My own favorite is something called Rogue Male. — Peter O'Toole

It's such a relief for me to sit in front of a tape recorder and not be using it to learn my lines. — Peter O'Toole

So the first time I ever came into contact with O'Toole was at one of these very gatherings. I remember it well because I'd just punched Harold Pinter down a flight of stairs. Oh yes, I'm afraid so. No long dramatic pauses this time, Harold; he got one right on the side of the jaw. Wham! — Brian Blessed

Always a bridesmaid never a bride my foot! — Peter O'Toole

The old white man didn't look into your eyes, he looked clear through your eyes, and straight to the inside of the back of your head. 'Instead of runnin from pain, which is the natural thing in life, in boxing you step to it, get me? — F.X. Toole

Political commercials encourage the deceptive, the destructive and the degrading. — John O'Toole

It is time for me to chuck in the sponge. To retire from films and stage. The heart for it has gone out of me: it won't come back. — Peter O'Toole