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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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Walker Percy
Age: 73 †
Born: 1916
Born: May 28
Died: 1990
Died: May 10
Author
Novelist
Philosopher
Physician
Writer
Birmingham
Alabama
Discovered
Even
Oneself
Fun
Free
Doe
Anything
Persons
Person

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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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To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something.
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Ignorance, if recognized, is often more fruitful than the appearance of knowledge.
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Life is fits and starts, mostly fits.
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Classes? Categories? Was that what we had come to?
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Bourbon does for me what the piece of cake did for Proust.
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Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
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Genius consists not in making great discoveries, but in seeing the connection between small discoveries.
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Jews wait for the Lord, Protestants sing hymns to him, Catholics say mass and eat him.
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Why has the South produced so many good writers? Because we got beat.
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Ooooh, Kate groans, Kate herself now. I'm so afraid. I know. What am I going to do? You mean right now? Yes. We'll go to my car. Then we'll drive down to the French Market and get some coffee. Then we'll go home. Is everything going to be all right? Yes. Tell me. Say it. Everything is going to be all right.
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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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In this world, goodness is destined to be defeated.
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Since grief only aggravates your loss, grieve not for what is past.
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What needs to be discharged is the intolerable tenderness of the past, the past gone and grieved over and never made sense of. Music ransoms us from the past, declares an amnesty, brackets and sets aside the old puzzles. Sing a new song. Start a new life, get a girl, look into her shadowy eyes, smile.
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I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?
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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.
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My mother refused to let me fail. So I insisted.
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Small disconnected facts, if you take note of them, have a way of becoming connected.
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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.
Walker Percy