Quote

The present age is demented. It is possessed by a sense of dislocation, a loss of personal identity, an alternating sentimentality and rage which, in an individual patient, could be characterized as dementia.

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
Individual
Possessed
Sense
Rage
Patient
Alternating
Identity
Dislocation
Loss
Dementia
Personal
Demented
Present
Characterized
Age
Sentimentality

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Consciously cultivate the ordinary.
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What nuns don't realize is that they look better in nun clothes than J.C. Penney pantsuits.
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You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.
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Children notice things first, people later.
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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.
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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.
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I sometimes think novelists write about sex in order to avoid boring themselves to death.
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It is not merely the truth of science that makes it beautiful, but its simplicity.
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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.
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We love those who know the worst of us and don't turn their face away.
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Americans are the nicest, most generous, and sentimental people on earth. Yet Americans have killed more unborn children than any nation in history.
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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.
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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.
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Bourbon does for me what the piece of cake did for Proust.
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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.
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I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?
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Boredom is the self being stuffed with itself.
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Small disconnected facts, if you take note of them, have a way of becoming connected.
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Where there is chance of gain, there is also chance of loss. Whenever one courts great happiness, one also risks malaise.
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This Midwestern sky is the nakedest loneliest sky in America. To escape it, people live inside and underground.
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