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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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John Kennedy Toole
Age: 31 †
Born: 1937
Born: December 17
Died: 1969
Died: March 26
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Professor
Screenwriter
Soldier
Writer
New Orleans
Louisiana
Fall
Perverse
Look
Optimism
Looks
Proper
Men
Refuse
Misery
Position
Since
Universe

More quotes by John Kennedy Toole

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Once a person was asked to step into this brutal century, anything could happen
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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.
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Veneration of Mark Twain is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate.
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Leaving New Orleans also frightened me considerably. Outside of the city limits the heart of darkness, the true wasteland begins.
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Having once been so high, humanity fell so low. What had once been dedicated to the soul was now dedicated to the sale.
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The heart is important at any age, I'm afraid.
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Jail was preferable. There they only limited you physically. In a mental ward they tampered with your soul and worldview and mind.
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It will all end very badly, Gus
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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.
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Mothers got a hard road to travel, believe me.
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My life is a rather grim one. One day I shall perhaps describe it to you in great detail.
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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.
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I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one.
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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.
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This liberal doxy must be impaled upon the member of a particularly large stallion.
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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.
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The day before me is fraught with God knows what horrors.
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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.
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... 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
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Mother went out again tonight, looking like a courtesan.
John Kennedy Toole