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
Conditions
Books
Lying
Human
Humans
Book
Always
Condition

More quotes by Walker Percy

Image
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
Image
But there is much to be said for giving up ... grand ambitions and living the most ordinary life imaginable.
Walker Percy
Image
Boredom is the self being stuffed with itself.
Walker Percy
Image
What nuns don't realize is that they look better in nun clothes than J.C. Penney pantsuits.
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
Since grief only aggravates your loss, grieve not for what is past.
Walker Percy
Image
One of the peculiar ironies of being a human self in the Cosmos: A stranger approaching you in the street will in a second's glance see you whole, size you up, place you in a way in which you cannot and never will, even though you have spent a lifetime with yourself, live in the Century of the Self, and therefore ought to know yourself best of all.
Walker Percy
Image
Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
Walker Percy
Image
[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
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
You can get all A's and still flunk life.
Walker Percy
Image
I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?
Walker Percy
Image
I sometimes think novelists write about sex in order to avoid boring themselves to death.
Walker Percy
Image
It makes people nervous for one to step out of one's role.
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
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
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
Where there is chance of gain, there is also chance of loss. Whenever one courts great happiness, one also risks malaise.
Walker Percy
Image
Why is it that no other species but man gets bored? Under the circumstances in which a man gets bored, a dog goes to sleep.
Walker Percy
Image
Ignorance, if recognized, is often more fruitful than the appearance of knowledge.
Walker Percy