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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
Make
Trade
Ones
Physician
Talk
Patients
Write
Sense
Physicians
Tell
Stock
Truth
Medical
Writing
Patient
More quotes by Walker Percy
I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?
Walker Percy
This Midwestern sky is the nakedest loneliest sky in America. To escape it, people live inside and underground.
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
Consciously cultivate the ordinary.
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
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
Lucky is the man who does not secretly believe that every possibility is open to him.
Walker Percy
What nuns don't realize is that they look better in nun clothes than J.C. Penney pantsuits.
Walker Percy
Why has the South produced so many good writers? Because we got beat.
Walker Percy
If poets often commit suicide, it is not because their poems are bad but because they are good. Whoever heard of a bad poet committing suicide? The reader is only a little better off. The exhilaration of a good poem lasts twenty minutes, an hour at most. Unlike the scientist, the artist has reentry problems that are frequent and catastrophic.
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
It is not merely the truth of science that makes it beautiful, but its simplicity.
Walker Percy
A good title should be like a good metaphor. It should intrigue without being too baffling or too obvious.
Walker Percy
In a word, the consumer of mass culture is lonely, not only lonely, but spiritually impoverished.
Walker Percy
Peace is only better than war when it's not hell too. War being hell makes sense.
Walker Percy
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
Maybe there are times when an honest hatred serves us better than love corrupted by sentimentality, meretriciousness, sententiousness, cuteness.
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
Jews wait for the Lord, Protestants sing hymns to him, Catholics say mass and eat him.
Walker Percy
I sometimes think novelists write about sex in order to avoid boring themselves to death.
Walker Percy