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A good title should be like a good metaphor. It should intrigue without being too baffling or too obvious.

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
Titles
Metaphor
Obvious
Without
Writing
Good
Baffling
Like
Intrigue
Title

More quotes by 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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Since grief only aggravates your loss, grieve not for what is past.
Walker Percy
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You can get all A's and still flunk life.
Walker Percy
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We love those who know the worst of us and don't turn their face away.
Walker Percy
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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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Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
Walker Percy
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Jews wait for the Lord, Protestants sing hymns to him, Catholics say mass and eat him.
Walker Percy
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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.
Walker Percy
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Consciously cultivate the ordinary.
Walker Percy
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The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
Walker Percy
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Life is fits and starts, mostly fits.
Walker Percy
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Bourbon does for me what the piece of cake did for Proust.
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
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Bad books always lie. They lie most of all about the human condition.
Walker Percy
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Being uneducated is no guarantee against being obnoxious.
Walker Percy
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Why has the South produced so many good writers? Because we got beat.
Walker Percy
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Joy and sadness come by turns.
Walker Percy
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It is not a bad thing to settle for the Little Way, not the big search for the big happiness but the sad little happiness of drinks and kisses, a good little car and a warm deep thigh.
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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It is not merely the truth of science that makes it beautiful, but its simplicity.
Walker Percy