Quote

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.

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
People
Serious
Free
Billiard
United
Ricochet
Place
Rotate
Around
Deciding
Problem
Balls
States
Using
Like
Americans

More quotes by 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
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
Image
Nobody but a Southerner knows the wrenching rinsing sadness of the cities of the North.
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
What nuns don't realize is that they look better in nun clothes than J.C. Penney pantsuits.
Walker Percy
Image
You can get all A's and still flunk life.
Walker Percy
Image
Why is it that one can look at a lion or a planet or an owl or at someone's finger as long as one pleases, but looking into the eyes of another person is, if prolonged past a second, a perilous affair?
Walker Percy
Image
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.
Walker Percy
Image
Nothing remains but desire, and desire comes howling down Elysian Fields like a mistral.
Walker Percy
Image
It is not merely the truth of science that makes it beautiful, but its simplicity.
Walker Percy
Image
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.
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
Since grief only aggravates your loss, grieve not for what is past.
Walker Percy
Image
I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?
Walker Percy
Image
Bad books always lie. They lie most of all about the human condition.
Walker Percy
Image
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
Image
To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something.
Walker Percy
Image
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
Image
Losing hope is not so bad. There's something worse: losing hope and hiding it from yourself.
Walker Percy
Image
Home may be where the heart is but it's no place to spend Wednesday afternoon.
Walker Percy