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

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 chees…

- John Kennedy Toole

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

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 …

- John Kennedy 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

I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one.

- John Kennedy Toole

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 l…

- John Kennedy Toole

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

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 th…

- John Kennedy Toole