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Before, I wandered as a diversion. Now I wander seriously and sit and read as a diversion.

Walker Percy

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Walker Percy
Age: 73 †
Born: 1916
Born: May 28
Died: 1990
Died: May 10
Author
Novelist
Philosopher
Physician
Writer
Birmingham
Alabama
Wandered
Diversion
Wander
Seriously
Read

More quotes by Walker Percy

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You can get all A's and still flunk life.
Walker Percy
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One of the peculiar ironies of being a human self in the Cosmos: A stranger approaching you in the street will in a second's glance see you whole, size you up, place you in a way in which you cannot and never will, even though you have spent a lifetime with yourself, live in the Century of the Self, and therefore ought to know yourself best of all.
Walker Percy
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Lucky is the man who does not secretly believe that every possibility is open to him.
Walker Percy
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Whenever I feel bad, I go to the library and read controversial periodicals. Though I do not know whether I am a liberal or a conservative, I am nevertheless enlivened by the hatred which one bears the other. In fact, this hatred strikes me as one of the few signs of life remaining in the world.
Walker Percy
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For some time now the impression has been growing upon me that everyone is dead. It happens when I speak to people. In the middle of a sentence it will come over me: yes, beyond a doubt this is death. There is little to do but groan and make an excuse and slip away as quickly as one can.
Walker Percy
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Have you noticed that only in time of illness or disaster or death are people real?
Walker Percy
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Being uneducated is no guarantee against being obnoxious.
Walker Percy
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Americans are the nicest, most generous, and sentimental people on earth. Yet Americans have killed more unborn children than any nation in history.
Walker Percy
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Bad books always lie. They lie most of all about the human condition.
Walker Percy
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I couldn't stand it. I still can't stand it. I can't stand the way things are. I cannot tolerate this age.
Walker Percy
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Life is fits and starts, mostly fits.
Walker Percy
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I sometimes think novelists write about sex in order to avoid boring themselves to death.
Walker Percy
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But there is much to be said for giving up ... grand ambitions and living the most ordinary life imaginable.
Walker Percy
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Fiction doesn’t tell us something we don’t know, it tells us something we know but don’t know that we know.
Walker Percy
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Why did God make woman so beautiful and man with such a loving heart?
Walker Percy
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Joy and sadness come by turns.
Walker Percy
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Where there is chance of gain, there is also chance of loss. Whenever one courts great happiness, one also risks malaise.
Walker Percy
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I had discovered that a person does not have to be this or be that or be anything, not even oneself. One is free.
Walker Percy
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Why is it that no other species but man gets bored? Under the circumstances in which a man gets bored, a dog goes to sleep.
Walker Percy
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Why is it that one can look at a lion or a planet or an owl or at someone's finger as long as one pleases, but looking into the eyes of another person is, if prolonged past a second, a perilous affair?
Walker Percy