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It makes people nervous for one to step out of one's role.
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
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Roles
Makes
People
Nervous
Role
Step
More quotes by Walker Percy
Bourbon does for me what the piece of cake did for Proust.
Walker Percy
Fiction doesn’t tell us something we don’t know, it tells us something we know but don’t know that we know.
Walker Percy
Why is it that no other species but man gets bored? Under the circumstances in which a man gets bored, a dog goes to sleep.
Walker Percy
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.
Walker Percy
Losing hope is not so bad. There's something worse: losing hope and hiding it from yourself.
Walker Percy
Nothing remains but desire, and desire comes howling down Elysian Fields like a mistral.
Walker Percy
Classes? Categories? Was that what we had come to?
Walker Percy
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
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
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
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.
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
Jews wait for the Lord, Protestants sing hymns to him, Catholics say mass and eat him.
Walker Percy
In this world goodness is destined to be defeated. But a man must go down fighting. That is the victory. To do anything less is to be less than a man.
Walker Percy
There is no pain on this earth like seeing the same woman look at another man the way she once looked at you.
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
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
To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something.
Walker Percy
What nuns don't realize is that they look better in nun clothes than J.C. Penney pantsuits.
Walker Percy
Boredom is the self being stuffed with itself.
Walker Percy
