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Why has the South produced so many good writers? Because we got beat.

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
Good
Produced
Beat
Beats
Writers
South
Many

More quotes by Walker Percy

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But there is much to be said for giving up ... grand ambitions and living the most ordinary life imaginable.
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It is not merely the truth of science that makes it beautiful, but its simplicity.
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Why did God make woman so beautiful and man with such a loving heart?
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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.
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What needs to be discharged is the intolerable tenderness of the past, the past gone and grieved over and never made sense of. Music ransoms us from the past, declares an amnesty, brackets and sets aside the old puzzles. Sing a new song. Start a new life, get a girl, look into her shadowy eyes, smile.
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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.
Walker Percy
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Small disconnected facts, if you take note of them, have a way of becoming connected.
Walker Percy
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A good title should be like a good metaphor. It should intrigue without being too baffling or too obvious.
Walker Percy
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This Midwestern sky is the nakedest loneliest sky in America. To escape it, people live inside and underground.
Walker Percy
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Peace is only better than war when it's not hell too. War being hell makes sense.
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Boredom is the self being stuffed with itself.
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In a word, the consumer of mass culture is lonely, not only lonely, but spiritually impoverished.
Walker Percy
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Joy and sadness come by turns.
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I had discovered that a person does not have to be this or be that or be anything, not even oneself. One is free.
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Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
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Jews wait for the Lord, Protestants sing hymns to him, Catholics say mass and eat him.
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Home may be where the heart is but it's no place to spend Wednesday afternoon.
Walker Percy
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Have you noticed that only in time of illness or disaster or death are people real?
Walker Percy
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Ignorance, if recognized, is often more fruitful than the appearance of knowledge.
Walker Percy
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It makes people nervous for one to step out of one's role.
Walker Percy