John Kennedy Toole

Mon appareil respiratoire est, malheureusement, d’une qualité inférieure à la moyenne. M’est avis que je suis le fruit d’un engendrement d’une particulière faiblesse de la part de mon père. Son sperme fut émis, je le crains, d’une manière très négligente.

'Miss Trixie has been with us for over fifty years. That will give you some idea of the satisfaction that our workers get from their association with Levy Pants. Miss Trixie worked for Mr Levy's late father, a fine old gentleman.'
'Yes, a fine old gentleman,' Miss Trixie said, unable to remember the elder Mr Levy at all anymore. 'He treated me well. Always had a kind word, that man.'
'Thank you, Miss Trixie,' Mr Gonzalez said quickly, like a master of ceremonies trying to end a variety act that had failed horribly.
'The company says it's going to give me a nice boiled ham for Easter,' Miss Trixie told Ignatius. 'I certainly hope so. They forgot all about my Thanksgiving turkey.'
'Miss Trixie has stood by Levy Pants through the years,' the office manager explained while the ancient assistant accountant babbled something else about the turkey.
'I've been waiting for years to retire, but every year they say I have one more to go. They work you till you drop,' Miss Trixie wheezed. Then losing interest in retirement, she added 'I could have used that turkey.'

In a sense I have always felt something of a kinship with the colored race because its position is the same as mine: we both exist outside the inner realm of American society. Of course, my exile is voluntary. However, it is apparent that many of the Negroes wish to become active members of the American middle class. I cannot imagine why. I must admit that this desire on their part leads me to question their value judgments. However, if they wish to join the bourgeoisie, it is really none of my business. They may seal their own doom. Personally, I would agitate quite adamantly if I suspected that anyone were attempting to help me upward toward the middle class. (...) The agitation would take the form of many protest marches complete with the traditional banners and posters, but these would say, 'End the Middle Class', 'The Middle Class Must Go.' I am not above tossing a small Molotov cocktail or two, either. In addition, I would studiously avoid sitting near the middle class in lunch counters and on public transportation, maintaining the intrinsic honesty and grandeur of my being.
(...)
I do admire the terror which Negroes are able to inspire in the hearts of some members of the white proletariat and only wish (This is a rather personal confession.) that I possessed the ability to similarly terrorize. The Negro terrorizes simply by being himself; I, however, must browbeat a bit in order to achieve the same end. Perhaps I should have been a Negro. I suspect that I would have been a rather large and terrifying one, continually pressing my ample thigh against the withered thighs of old white ladies in public conveyances a great deal and eliciting more than one shriek of panic. Then, too, if I were a Negro, I would not be pressured by my mother to find a good job, for no good jobs would be available. My mother herself, a worn old Negress, would be too broken by years of underpaid labor as a domestic to go out bowling at night. She and I could live most pleasantly in some moldy shack in the slums in a state of ambitionless peace, realizing contentedly that we were unwanted, that striving was meaningless.

- Vous ne savez donc pas qu'il est absurde d'avoir une altercation avec un nécessiteux ? Je suis parfaitement insolvable.

- Alors vous devez vous mettre à la lecture dès aujourd'hui, je vous ferai un programme. Ainsi serez-vous en mesure de commencer à saisir la crise que traverse notre époque, énonça solennellement Ignatius. Vous commencerez par les derniers Romains, au premier rang desquels Boèce, bien sûr. Puis vous vous plongerez dans l'étude relativement exhaustive des penseurs du début du Moyen Age. Vous pouvez sauter sans mal la Renaissance et les Lumières. C'est surtout de la propagande dangereuse. Et, pendant que j'y suis, vous feriez mieux aussi de sauter les Romantiques et les Victoriens. Pour l'époque contemporaine, un choix de bandes dessinées et d'illustrés. (p. 349)

Destin hideux s'il en fut : il devait désormais affronter l'ultime perversion : ALLER AU TRAVAIL. (p.51)

"Quand un vrai génie apparaît en ce bas monde, on le peut reconnaître à ce signe que les imbéciles sont tous ligués contre lui".
Jonathan Swift