Quote

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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Walker Percy
Age: 73 †
Born: 1916
Born: May 28
Died: 1990
Died: May 10
Author
Novelist
Philosopher
Physician
Writer
Birmingham
Alabama
Tells
Fiction
Tell
Doesn
Something

More quotes by Walker Percy

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In this world, goodness is destined to be defeated.
Walker Percy
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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?
Walker Percy
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This Midwestern sky is the nakedest loneliest sky in America. To escape it, people live inside and underground.
Walker Percy
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In a word, the consumer of mass culture is lonely, not only lonely, but spiritually impoverished.
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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Small disconnected facts, if you take note of them, have a way of becoming connected.
Walker Percy
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Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
Walker Percy
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Lord, grant that my work increase knowledge and help other men. Failing that, Lord, grant that it will not lead to man’s destruction. Failing that, Lord, grant that my article in Brain be published before the destruction takes place.
Walker Percy
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Joy and sadness come by turns.
Walker Percy
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I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?
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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Have you noticed that only in time of illness or disaster or death are people real?
Walker Percy
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To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something.
Walker Percy
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You can get all A's and still flunk life.
Walker Percy
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Since grief only aggravates your loss, grieve not for what is past.
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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What is the nature of the search? you ask. Really it is very simple, at least for a fellow like me so simple that it is easily overlooked. The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. This morning, for example, I felt as if I had come to myself on a strange island.
Walker Percy
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Bourbon does for me what the piece of cake did for Proust.
Walker Percy
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Life is fits and starts, mostly fits.
Walker Percy
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There is no pain on this earth like seeing the same woman look at another man the way she once looked at you.
Walker Percy