Quote

It is possible, however, that the artist is both thin-skinned and prophetic and, like the canary lowered into the mine shaft to test the air, has caught a whiff of something lethal.

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
Possible
Thin
Canary
Artist
Test
Whiff
Something
Tests
Canaries
Like
Caught
Shaft
Mines
Lowered
Mine
Skinned
Air
Lethal
However
Prophetic

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I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one, that is, who really wants to listen. When it does at last dawn on a man that you really want to hear about his business, the look that comes over his face is something to see.
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We love those who know the worst of us and don't turn their face away.
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You can get all A's and still flunk life.
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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.
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But what physician has not had patients who don't make any sense at all? To tell the truth, they're our stock-in-trade. We talk and write about the ones we can make sense of.
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The enduring is something which must be accounted for. One cannot simply shrug it off.
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Suppose you ask God for a miracle and God says yes, very well. How do you live the rest of your life?
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Nobody but a Southerner knows the wrenching rinsing sadness of the cities of the North.
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What nuns don't realize is that they look better in nun clothes than J.C. Penney pantsuits.
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Boredom is the self being stuffed with itself.
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A novel is what you call something that won't sell if you call it poems or short stories.
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Losing hope is not so bad. There's something worse: losing hope and hiding it from yourself.
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I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?
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In a word, the consumer of mass culture is lonely, not only lonely, but spiritually impoverished.
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Since grief only aggravates your loss, grieve not for what is past.
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I sometimes think novelists write about sex in order to avoid boring themselves to death.
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Maybe there are times when an honest hatred serves us better than love corrupted by sentimentality, meretriciousness, sententiousness, cuteness.
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In this world, goodness is destined to be defeated.
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Why has the South produced so many good writers? Because we got beat.
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As for hobbies, people with stimulating hobbies suffer from the most noxious of despairs since they are tranquilized in their despair.
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