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But what physician has not had patients who don't make any sense at all? To tell the truth, they're our stock-in-trade. We talk and write about the ones we can make sense of.
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
Truth
Medical
Writing
Patient
Make
Trade
Ones
Talk
Physician
Write
Patients
Sense
Physicians
Tell
Stock
More quotes by Walker Percy
Why is there such a gap between nonspeaking animals and speaking man, when there is no other such gap in nature?
Walker Percy
Why did God make woman so beautiful and man with such a loving heart?
Walker Percy
I couldn't stand it. I still can't stand it. I can't stand the way things are. I cannot tolerate this age.
Walker Percy
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
But there is much to be said for giving up ... grand ambitions and living the most ordinary life imaginable.
Walker Percy
Hatred strikes me as one of the few signs of life remaining in the world. This is another thing about the world which is upsidedown: all the friendly and likable people seem dead to me only the haters seem alive.
Walker Percy
Lucky is the man who does not secretly believe that every possibility is open to him.
Walker Percy
Bourbon does for me what the piece of cake did for Proust.
Walker Percy
I sometimes think novelists write about sex in order to avoid boring themselves to death.
Walker Percy
A novel is what you call something that won't sell if you call it poems or short stories.
Walker Percy
Like many young men in the South, he had trouble ruling out the possible. They are not like an immigrant's son in Passaic who desires to become a dentist and that is that. Southerners have trouble ruling out the possible. What happens to a... man to whom all things seem possible and every course of action open? Nothing of course.
Walker Percy
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
Home may be where the heart is but it's no place to spend Wednesday afternoon.
Walker Percy
Jews wait for the Lord, Protestants sing hymns to him, Catholics say mass and eat him.
Walker Percy
My mother refused to let me fail. So I insisted.
Walker Percy
Why has the South produced so many good writers? Because we got beat.
Walker Percy
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
Peace is only better than war when it's not hell too. War being hell makes sense.
Walker Percy
A good title should be like a good metaphor. It should intrigue without being too baffling or too obvious.
Walker Percy
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