A Quote by 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 cheese dip. — © 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 cheese dip.
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.
When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.
A cheese dip is good - it's for when you're like, 'You know what, I've had a long day. I'm just gonna eat a big bowl of cheese, and I'm not gonna care about it.'
The moment in the account of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis is when they realize they're naked and try and cover themselves with fig leaves. That seemed to me a perfect allegory of what happened in the 20th century with regard to literary modernism. Literary modernism grew out of a sense that, “Oh my god! I'm telling a story! Oh, that can't be the case, because I'm a clever person. I'm a literary person! What am I going to do to distinguish myself?...a lot of modernism does seem to come out of a fear of being thought an ordinary storyteller.
All is summed up in the prayer which a young female human is said to have uttered recently: "O God, make me a normal twentieth-century girl!" Thanks to our labors, this will mean increasingly: "Make me a minx, a moron, and a parasite.
Over the years, I had something in principle against autobiographical writing altogether because memory plays tricks on us, and we also tend to reinvent ourselves. But there comes an age when one begins to observe life, and there are things that need time to mature, also in terms of literary form.
While I am happy to make the occasional foray into educational philosophy - writing, for example, of the difficulty in the contemporary context for a teacher to be 'truthful' - it is more the personal conduct of a life than social institutions that I am concerned to examine.
But when you're in front of an audience and you make them laugh at a new idea, you're guiding the whole being for the moment. No one is ever more him/herself than when they really laugh. Their defenses are down. It's very Zen-like, that moment. They are completely open, completely themselves when that message hits the brain and the laugh begins. That's when new ideas can be implanted. If a new idea slips in at that moment, it has a chance to grow.
When you struggle against this moment, you're actually struggling against the entire universe. Instead, you can make the decision that today you will not struggle against the whole universe by struggling against this moment. This means that your acceptance of this moment is total and complete. You accept things as they are, not as you wish they were in this moment. This is important to understand. You can wish for things in the future to be different, but in this moment you have to accept things as they are.
I am in the Master of Professional Writing program teaching Humor Writing, Literary and Dramatic.
In the early 16th century the Italian physician Jacopo Berengario da Carpi, a pioneer in the science of anatomy, came up with the idea that perhaps 'brain commotion' was caused by the thrust of the soft structure of the brain against the solid case of the skull.
The challenge is simple: Quitting when you hit the Dip is a bad idea. If the journey you started was worth doing, then quitting when you hit the Dip just wastes the time you’ve already invested. Quit in the Dip often enough and you’ll find yourself becoming a serial quitter, starting many things but accomplishing little. Simple: If you can’t make it through the Dip, don’t start. If you can embrace that simple rule, you’ll be a lot choosier about which journeys you start.
The only thing that mattered to me with 'Xen' was setting things up against each other in an uncomfortable way. If there's a really soft piece of music, and then you're hit by a painful explosive sound, your brain does this funny somersault trying to make sense of why this happened. And at that very moment, your brain is malleable.
Freedom begins the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it's time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself.
No one is obliged to take a position on the urgent issues of the day, but there are times when our impoverished public sphere could do with some occasional assertions of literary and moral authority.
In the 21st century, our adversaries will continue to use cyberattacks against us. We need to be prepared to defend our networks against this growing threat to our democracy, especially the most fundamental part of our political system: our elections.
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