102 Quotes by John Kennedy Toole

For Christmas, Mrs. Levy always compiled not a gift list but rather a list of the injustices and brutalities she had suffered since August. The girls got this list in their stockings. The only gift Mrs. Levy asked of the girls was that they attack their father. Mrs. Levy loved Christmas.

Mother doesn't cook, Ignatius said dogmatically, She burns.

Mothers got a hard road to travel, believe me.

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

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

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.

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.

I am the avenging sword of taste and decency,

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.