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

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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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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.
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In this world, goodness is destined to be defeated.
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The enduring is something which must be accounted for. One cannot simply shrug it off.
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Life is fits and starts, mostly fits.
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I sometimes think novelists write about sex in order to avoid boring themselves to death.
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Bourbon does for me what the piece of cake did for Proust.
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Jews wait for the Lord, Protestants sing hymns to him, Catholics say mass and eat him.
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A repetition is the re-enactment of past experience toward the end of isolating the time segment which has lapsed in order that it, the lapsed time, can be savored of itself and without the usual adulteration of events that clog time like peanuts in brittle.
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Have you noticed that only in time of illness or disaster or death are people real?
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Before, I wandered as a diversion. Now I wander seriously and sit and read as a diversion.
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Since grief only aggravates your loss, grieve not for what is past.
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It is not merely the truth of science that makes it beautiful, but its simplicity.
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You can get all A's and still flunk life.
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I couldn't stand it. I still can't stand it. I can't stand the way things are. I cannot tolerate this age.
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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.
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