Quote

Bad books always lie. They lie most of all about the human condition.

Walker Percy

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Walker Percy
Age: 73 †
Born: 1916
Born: May 28
Died: 1990
Died: May 10
Author
Novelist
Philosopher
Physician
Writer
Birmingham
Alabama
Always
Condition
Conditions
Books
Lying
Human
Humans
Book

More quotes by Walker Percy

Image
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
Image
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
Image
Lucky is the man who does not secretly believe that every possibility is open to him.
Walker Percy
Image
A novel is what you call something that won't sell if you call it poems or short stories.
Walker Percy
Image
The fact is I am quite happy in a movie, even a bad movie. Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives.
Walker Percy
Image
I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?
Walker Percy
Image
Bourbon does for me what the piece of cake did for Proust.
Walker Percy
Image
Losing hope is not so bad. There's something worse: losing hope and hiding it from yourself.
Walker Percy
Image
What nuns don't realize is that they look better in nun clothes than J.C. Penney pantsuits.
Walker Percy
Image
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
Image
Children notice things first, people later.
Walker Percy
Image
To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something.
Walker Percy
Image
Americans are the nicest, most generous, and sentimental people on earth. Yet Americans have killed more unborn children than any nation in history.
Walker Percy
Image
Before, I wandered as a diversion. Now I wander seriously and sit and read as a diversion.
Walker Percy
Image
Suppose you ask God for a miracle and God says yes, very well. How do you live the rest of your life?
Walker Percy
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
For the world is broken, sundered, busted down the middle, self ripped from self and man pasted back together as mythical monster, half angel, half beast, but no man...Some day a man will walk into my office as a ghost or beast or ghost-beast and walk out as a man, which is to say sovereign wanderer, lordly exile, worker and waiter and watcher.
Walker Percy
Image
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