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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
Oneself
Fun
Free
Doe
Anything
Persons
Person
Even
Discovered

More quotes by Walker Percy

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We love those who know the worst of us and don't turn their face away.
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If I had the choice of knowing the truth or searching for the truth, I'd take the search.
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My mother refused to let me fail. So I insisted.
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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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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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You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.
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Classes? Categories? Was that what we had come to?
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Consciously cultivate the ordinary.
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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
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I sometimes think novelists write about sex in order to avoid boring themselves to death.
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I don't like to be described as a Southern writer. The danger is, if you're described as a Southern writer, you might be thought of as someone who writes about a picturesque local scene like Uncle Tom's Cabin, Gone With the Wind, something like that.
Walker Percy
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Why is there such a gap between nonspeaking animals and speaking man, when there is no other such gap in nature?
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In a word, the consumer of mass culture is lonely, not only lonely, but spiritually impoverished.
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In this world goodness is destined to be defeated. But a man must go down fighting. That is the victory. To do anything less is to be less than a man.
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Why did God make woman so beautiful and man with such a loving heart?
Walker Percy
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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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Free people have a serious problem with place, being in a place, using up a place, deciding which new place to rotate to. Americans ricochet around the United States like billiard balls.
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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[In art] you are telling the reader or the listener or the viewer something he already knows but which he doesn't quite know that he knows, so that in the action of communication he experiences a recognition, a feeling that he has been there before, a shock of recognition.
Walker Percy
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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.
Walker Percy