John Kennedy Toole > Quotes

“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

“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, A Confederacy of Dunces

“...I doubt very seriously whether anyone will hire me.'

What do you mean, babe? You a fine boy with a good education.'

Employers sense in me a denial of their values.' He rolled over onto his back. 'They fear me. I suspect that they can see that I am forced to function in a century I loathe. This was true even when I worked for the New Orleans Public Library.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“Apparently I lack some particular perversion which today's employer is seeking. ”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“I dust a bit...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 J. Reilly”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“The day before me is fraught with God knows what horrors.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“When Fortuna spins you downward, go out to a movie and get more out of life.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“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, A Confederacy of Dunces

“My life is a rather grim one. One day I shall perhaps describe it to you in great detail.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“Stop!' I cried imploringly to my god-like mind.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“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, A Confederacy of Dunces

“Is my paranoia getting completely out of hand, or are you mongoloids really talking about me?”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“Leaving New Orleans also frightened me considerably. Outside of the city limits the heart of darkness, the true wasteland begins.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“Canned food is a perversion,' Ignatius said. 'I suspect that it is ultimately very damaging to the soul.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“I avoid that bleak first hour of the working day during which my still sluggish senses and body make ever chore a penance. I find that in arriving later, the work which I do perform is of a much higher quality.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“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, A Confederacy of Dunces

“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, A Confederacy of Dunces

“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, A Confederacy of Dunces

“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, A Confederacy of Dunces

“I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“with the breakdown of the medieval system, the gods of chaos, lunacy, and bad taste gained ascendancy.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“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, A Confederacy of Dunces

“Like a bitch in heat, I seem to attract a coterie of policemen and sanitation officials. ”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“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, A Confederacy of Dunces

“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, A Confederacy of Dunces

“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, A Confederacy of Dunces

“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, A Confederacy of Dunces

“...When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occassional cheese dip.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“Mother went out again tonight, looking like a courtesan.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“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

“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

“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, A Confederacy of Dunces

“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

“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, A Confederacy of Dunces

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

“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, A Confederacy of Dunces

“... 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, A Confederacy of Dunces

“Veneration of Mark Twain is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“This liberal doxy must be impaled on the member of a particularly large stallion!”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“I bet you cook good, huh?" Darlene asked.
"Mother doesn't cook," Ignatius said dogmatically.
"She burns.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“Optimism nausceates me. It is perverse. Since man's fall, his proper position in the universe has been one of misery.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“Mercaderes y charlatanes se hicieron con el control de Europa, llamando a su insidioso evangelio "La Ilustración". El día de la plaga estaba próximo; pero de las cenizas de la humanidad no surgió ningún fénix. El campesino humilde y piadoso, Pedro Labrador, se fue a la ciudad a vender a sus hijos a los señores del Nuevo Sistema para empresas que podemos calificar, en el mejor de los casos, de dudosas. (...) El giroscopio se había ampliado. La Gran Cadena del Sur se había roto como si fuera una serie de clips unidos por algún pobre imbécil; el nuevo destino de Pedro Labrador sería muerte, destrucción, anarquía, progreso, ambición y autosuperación. Iba a ser un destino malévolo: ahora se enfrentaba a la perversión de tener que IR A TRABAJAR.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“It will all end very badly, Gus”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“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, A Confederacy of Dunces

“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 blighted countries? What I want is a good, strong monarchy with a tasteful and decent king who has some knowledge of theology and geometry and to cultivate a Rich Inner Life.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“Like a bitch in heat, I seem to attract a coterie of policemen and sanitation officials. The world will someday get me on some ludicrous pretext; I simply await the day that they drag me to some air-conditioned dungeon and leave me there beneath the fluorescent lights and soundproofed ceiling to pay the price for scorning all that they hold dear within their little latex hearts.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“The Dr. Nuts seemed only as an acid gurgling down into his intestine. He filled with gas, the sealed valve trapping it just as one pinches the mouth of a balloon. Great eructations rose from his throat and bounced upward toward the refuse-laden bowl of the milk glass chandelier. Once a person was asked to step into this brutal century, anything could happen. Everywhere there lurked pitfalls like Abelman, the insipid Crusaders for Moorish Dignity, the Mancuso cretin, Dorian Greene, newspaper reporters, stripteasers, birds, photography, juvenile delinquents, Nazi pornographers. And especially Myrna Minkoff. The musky minx must be dealt with. Somehow. Someday. She must pay. Whatever happened, he must attend to her even if the revenge took years and he had to stalk her through decades from one coffee shop to another, from one folksinging orgy to another, from subway train to pad to cotton field to demonstration. Ignatius invoked an elaborate Elizabethan curse upon Myrna and, rolling over, frantically abused the glove once more.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“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, A Confederacy of Dunces

“Go dangle your withered parts over the toilet!' Ignatius screamed savagely.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“Employers sense in me a denial of their values." He rolled over onto his back. "They fear me. I suspect that they can see that I am forced to function in a century which I loathe.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces